“Are you going to give a speech?' she asked gaily.He gave a choked laugh. 'Of course not,' he said. 'Not for ages.''My cousin Davey gave one on his very first day!' ...'In the Lords, I remember. It ...”

“If theres a single idea I emphasize when people ask about writing, its that theres no right way to produce a book. But I do think that whatever you do, you should do regularly, whether its waking u...”

“Of course, thats one of the dreams of modernist literature, whether realist or fantastic: that the more stories we tell each other about such tragedies, the fewer of them there will be. Were still ...”

“There are a lot of ways for a novelist to create suspense, but also really only two: one a trick, one an art.The trick is to keep a secret. Or many secrets, even. In Lee Childs books, Jack Reacher ...”

“The Thames was beautiful, dark, and swift beneath the billion yellow and white lights of the city”

“He often envied people who hadn't read his favourite books. They had such happiness before them.”

“A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't even be worth reading.”

“I always had this idea that you should never give up a happy middle in the hopes of a happy ending, because there is no such thing as a happy ending. Do you know what I mean? There is so much to lose.”

“Sometimes painful endings bring the best new beginnings.”

“I was happy, but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about i...”

“Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be r...”

“I walked over to the hill where we used to go and sled. There were a lot of little kids there. I watched them flying. Doing jumps and having races. And I thought that all those little kids are goin...”

“Youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.”

“Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it al...”

“The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.”