Alan Hollinghurst

"For a shy person, it strikes me now that my first book was rather bold. But I think shy people often have a strange, compensatory impulse. When they do something, it's ridiculously outspoken."

"I think there is a sort of mystery to being an only child in the way that you make your own unshared world when you're very young. [...] I think being an only child was a good training for someone who takes as long to write novels as I seem to do. It requires a lot of solitude."

“It was the time of year when the atmosphere streamed with unexpected hints and memories, and a paradoxical sense of renewal.”

― Alan Hollinghurst