“You can’t write novels about people who are timid, risk-averse and passive. Or you can, but they’re called literary novels.”

“Plenty of people were writing novels; in fact, if one did a survey in the street, half of Edinburgh was writing a novel, and this meant that there really weren't enough characters to go round. Unless, of course, one wrote about people who were themselves writing novels. And what would the novels that these fictional characters were writing be about? Well, they would be novels about people writing novels.”

“He has a frightening aversion to text messaging in general."It's a phone. It's for making calls, not for writing novels".”

“To be shockingly original with your first novel, you don’t have to discover a new technique: Simply write about people as they are and not as the predominantly liberal and humanist literary establishment believes that they ought to be.”

“The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time.”

“What will you do?""Oh, hell, I'll write a novel about writing the screenplay and making the movie.""What are you going to call it?""Hollywood.""Hollywood?""Yes...”