Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough. - Martin Amis

On any longer view, man is only fitfully committed to the rational — to thinking, seeing, learning, knowing. Believing is what he's really proud of.

He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed.

...I think one shouldn't pussyfoot, and just say that you write the stuff that you would like to read. So you write for yourself, no doubt about that. But I do have a sort of romantic idea of someone in their twenties, of a certain bent, and when they pick up a book by me, they think — as I have done on several occasions — 'Ah, here is one for me. Here is a writer who I'll have to read all of, because they're speaking directly to me, and they're writing what I want to read.' And sometimes you're doing the signing queue and a reader comes past and you sign the book, and there's a little exchange of the eyes, where you think, 'Ah, that's one of them.' So there is that ideal reader. And it's someone who's discovering literature and homes in on you. I'm aware of such readers.