Karl Kraus

The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater distance from which it looks back.

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

When a man is treated like a beast, he says, 'After all, I'm human.' When he behaves like a beast, he says 'After all, I'm only human.'

There is nothing more difficult to define than an aphorism.

I'll be writing essays long after I've stopped writing fiction. There is this unusually broad range in the non-fiction, but if you look at what I'm capable of as a novelist, I'm more limited.

There are many reasons I feel at home in the U.K., but if I were asked to pinpoint the moment I knew I'd arrived, it might well be when I realised the British shared my love of fritters.