“The books, the authors who matter the most are those who speak to me and speak for me all those things about life I most need to hear as the confession of myself”

There are times when you don’t know yourself. There are times when you don’t want to know yourself.

He thought: How difficult it is to explain yourself to yourself. Sometimes there only is, and no knowing.

The thing is, when love is real, whether it’s ebbing or flowing, it’s always there, it never goes away. And that’s the only proof you can have that it is real, and not just a crush or an infatuation or a passing fancy

As someone who knows her mind and who I envy for that. As someone who is strong in herself without seeming to need anyone else to help her. As someone who makes me thinks and unsettles me in a way that makes me feel more alive.

I will not compromise on language or content. At 15, people can handle the same language as me, they’re just as complicated as me and are very interested in thinking about important questions for the first time.

Readers are made by readers – it is so obvious it is almost banal to say it.

Is it better to go with the flow or let the flow go?

Never give it all. You can never be yourself otherwise.

The pleasure of being bored ismooning about and doing nothing.

And the price for being a homo-hater should be as high as anyone can pay.

The most memorable people in life will be the friends who loved you when you weren’t very lovable.

Self pity is a disease which does not kill but corrodes.

History dies without the present. There is no future without the path made to it by the past.

If you’re rational and logical, they argue their case rationally and logically. If you’re loyal and faithful, they turn those against you.

We resent being faced with facts we’d prefer to ignore as much as being wrongly accused of doing something we haven’t.

Life is not like a novel, but a novel can be like life. The best ones always are.

Your source material is the people you know, not those you don’t know, but every character is an extension of the author’s own personality.

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.

In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.

My favourite authors are Milan Kundera and Jeanette Winterson.

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world – they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.

When you dream, you are an author, but you do not know how it will end.

If God is the author of life, there must be a script.