“Just as all writers were beginners once, so were all novels. They all went through rough stages, even the ones by our most hallowed masters.”

“Along this road, we won't stop moving forwardNot even if we become separated from one another.For us, most of all, there was never a time, never a place where you could just stand stillBut even so, if there were times when we were afraid, when we'd look back on it all and wonderWe'd just say that is was our destiny, wouldn't we?So we started off, all walking down the same road”

“She should have done science, not spent all her time with her head in novels. Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.”

“Mr Earbrass escaped from Messrs Scuffle and Dustcough, who were most anxious to go into all the ramifications of a scheme for having his novels translated into Urdu, and went to call on a distant cousin.”

“Never before had she seen such writers. They were impossibly vain, but quite openly so, as if thereby fulfilling a duty. Some (though by no means all) even came drunk, but it was as if they perceived som special, just-yesterday-discovered beauty in it. They were all proud of something to the point of strangeness.”

“I did worry at one stage that all my stories seem to revolve around secrets, lies and self-deception, but then I realized that most of human life revolves around those things too, so obviously they were going to feature hugely in anything I wrote. I write about people, so my novels are going to be as different as people are, but with the same core desires, hopes and fears that we all share.”