Besides, I don’t understand people who read a book for pleasure and then ruminate on the book’s ideas. Paper was invented so we wouldn’t have to keep all those thoughts in our heads.

You know what? It makes you understand why a dog eats its own vomit.

Do you want to know how to write novels? I’ll tell you the secret: start on page one and keep going, in order, until you come to the last page. Then stop.

Everybody comes to the library naked. That’s why they come here – to dress themselves in books.

The happiest people were the ones who existed as little more than dimly conscious food-ingestion devices that enjoyed the occasional orgasm. Intelligence and thinking were really only needed for acquiring food.

Later she came to realise that under one reality there’s always another. And another one under that.

Amateur detectives in fiction had always annoyed Ella. They were so unrealistic. She didn’t intend to be the Rabbit Back version of Miss Marple or a cheap Baker Street knock-off, and she really didn’t like...

Why doesn’t she write about life?” the people of Rabbit Back ask.

Are writers the torchbearers of humanity? It’s a romantic idea, but it’s complete rubbish. We writers are the crocodiles in the river.

Or maybe writers are like vultures. Some people feel we journalists are.” He mimicked a bird of prey and grinned.

Even the best cook can’t make chicken soup out of his own feet. There aren’t so terribly many ingredients in anyone’s life, less meat than there is on a sparrow. The average person could come...