I'd Like To Write The Way Matisse

I Don't Understand Why, In My Work, Writing Is Always So Dangerous. It's Very Destructive. People Who Write Books Are Destroyers.

The Reading Eye Must Do The Work To Make Them Live, And So It Did, Again And Again, Never The Same Life Twice, As The Artist Had Intended.

Narrative Is One Of The Best Intoxicants Or Tranquilisers.

On Buses And Trains, I Always Think About The Inexhaustible Variety Of Human Genes. We See Types, And Occasionally Twins, But Never Doubles. All Faces Are Unique, And This Is Exhilarating, Despite The Increasingly Plastic Similarity Of Tv Stars And Actors.

Narration Is As Much A Part Of Human Nature As Breath And The Circulation Of The Blood.... Storytelling Is Intrinsic To Biological Time, Which We Cannot Escape. Life, Pascal Said, Is Like Living In A Prison From Which Every Day Fellow Prisoners Are Taken Away To Be Executed. We Are All, Like Scheherazade, Under Sentence Of Death, And We All Think Of Our Lives As Narratives, With Beginnings, Middles And Ends.