Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well.

Nowadays, I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.

Oh yes, my generation liked to be in some pain when they read. The harder it was, the more good we believed it was doing us.

People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.

The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.

The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.

The library was the place I went to find out what there was to know. It was absolutely essential.

There is no bigger crime, in the English comic novel, than thinking you are right.

We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are.

When I think of the books I love, there's always a little laughter in the dark.

Without the balancing context of everyday life, all you have is the news, and news by its nature is generally bad.

Women often have a great need to portray themselves as sympathetic and pleasing, but we're also dark people with dark thoughts.

Working with great writers can be humbling and frightening, but it can also change you for good, forever.

World makers, social network makers, ask one question first: 'How can I do it?'

Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control.

A lot of people seem to feel that joy is only the most intense version of pleasure, arrived at by the same road - you simply have to go a little further down the track. That has not been my experience.