If you want to write ... you must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

Seventeen publishers rejected the manuscript, at which time we knew we had something pretty hot.

My ideal job? Landlord of a bordello! The company's good and the mornings are quiet, which is the best time to write.

If you asked someone, 'Can you play the violin?' and he says, 'I don't know, I have not tried, perhaps I can,' you laugh at him. Whereas about writing, people always say: 'I don't know, I have not tried,' as though one had only to try and one would become a writer.

Most people who seek attention and regard by announcing that they're writing a novel are actually so devoid of narrative talent that they can't hold the attention of a dinner table for thirty seconds, even with a dirty joke.

Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.

I always start a book for money. If you're married five times you have to.

A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

The only advice I have to give a young novelist is to fuck a really good agent.

At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thoughts occur like 'I bet Tom Stoppard doesn't have to do this' or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling'.