“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.”

“All I'd ever wanted was to forget. but even when I thought I had, pieces had kept emerging, like bits of wood floating up to the surface that only hint at the shipwreck below.”

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”

“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”

“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?" That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry...”

“I was born behind the Iron Curtain, and I remember heated discussions about large-scale terra-forming projects, such as reversing the direction of the river Ob or putting up large reflectors into s...”

“You cannot step into the same river twice.”

“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going away.”

“I'm trying to remember how you tell the time by looking at the sun." -"I should leave it for a while, it's too bright to see the numbers at the moment.”

“The sun burnt every day. It burnt time.”