“When we are not sure, we are alive.”

We never get accustomed to being less important to other people than they are to us.

To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honor – the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two.

I aim to be content with what I produce. It’s an aim I never achieve, but I go over my work word by word, time and again, so as to be as little dissatisfied as possible.

Innocence is a kind of insanity.

Most things disappoint till you look deeper.

Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.

Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector.

People who like quotes love meaningless generalizations.

One has no talent. I have no talent. It’s just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.

As long as nothing happens anything is possible.

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You’re there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see – every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.

Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.

All good novelists have bad memories. What you remember comes out as journalism; what you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.

Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism.

She mixes religion with desertion to make it sound noble.

The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.

The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.

The last time I felt alive – I was looking into your eyes. Breathing your air, touching your skin, saying goodbye. The last time I felt alive, I was dying.

Give up all hope of peace so long as your mother-in-law is alive.

I’ve been so unhappy for years, so unhappy, I don’t understand how a human being can be so unhappy all the time and still be alive.

Be glad you’re even alive. Be furious you’re going to die.

The world is getting to be such a dangerous place, a man is lucky to get out of it alive.

It’s a funny old world. A man’s lucky if he gets out of it alive.