“I am always happy up a ladder with a paintbrush in my hand. And I wish I had more time to spend in the garden - not least because I get good ideas for writing when I'm out there.”

“Excessively narrow reading is unhelpful, certainly. Reading only Serious Literature is no better than reading only trash in this respect.”

“Though my appetite for food grew frail, my hunger for books was constant.”

“A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.”

“I have eavesdropped with impunity on the lives of people who do not exist. I have peeped shamelessly into hearts and bathroom closets. I have leaned over shoulders to follow the movements of...”

“When you read a manuscript that has been damaged by water, fire, light or just the passing of the years, your eye needs to study not just the shape of the letters but other marks of producti...”

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot mov...”

“All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of...”

“Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them begins with our birth. First there was nothing, then I was born...Yet that is not so. Human lives are not pieces of s...”