Quotes from Johnny Rich

I don't see big subjects as separate from little ones. Yes, you could trudge through life with great human tragedies played out before your eyes without ever taking notice. Or you could see a universe in the smallest thing. The way a person takes their coffee, for example, might say something profound and important about that person, about all humanity, about existence itself.

Publishers are businesses and I don't blame them for that. If they didn't make money by publishing books, there wouldn't be any books.

I've often been criticised, but never critically wounded

To be motivated to write a novel, I need to be unable not to write.

Good writing is more about graft and craft than inspiration and aspiration.

Nothing is over our heads if we hold them high enough.

It would be both an identical work of art only by virtue of its difference. The same but different, he suggested, like twins.

A novel must be judged on its merits, not on how hard the journey was to write it.

Genes do not make an individual homosexual. They play their part, but so does the rest of the universe.

We stand in black to watch this rite performed, the body in the box, the box in the hole, the dirt on the box.

You know, sometimes I even envy myself.

The human genome is a life written in a book where every word has been written before. A story endlessly rehearsed.

He's a typical existentialist. And that's a contradiction in terms if ever there was one.

One thing, however, is certain in life. No one survives it.

Like all fiction, my lies are just my efforts to be truer than the truth.

Good writing is more about graft and craft than inspiration and aspiration.

Publishers are businesses and I don't blame them for that. If they didn't make money by publishing books, there wouldn't be any books.