“Language leads a double life - and so does the novelist. You chat with family and friends, you attend to your correspondence, you consult menus and shopping lists, you observe road signs, and so on. Then you enter your study, where language exists in quite another form - as the stuff of patterned ar”

“Nobody ever thinks a song is about them. Well, not when it's mean. When it's a good song everybody thinks it's about them. And when it's mean, nobody thinks it's about them.”