Glen Duncan

“Cheney, Rumsfeld - they were Shakespearean in their attitude of impunity.”

“The lies you tell yourself. The necessary lies.”

“The winter of 1991 found me stunned and shivering in the aftermath of an imploded love affair. Being 26, I flung myself actorishly on London and, without any intimations of my own ludicrousness, spent two years showing God what I thought of Him by letting myself go.”

“One of the things that seems absolutely clear to me about werewolves - with their canine makeup - is that they would be dogs, as it were.”

“All motivation derives from the primary fact of mortality. Take mortality away and motivation loses its...motivation.”

“I'm not very good at story. In fact, compared to character and language, I barely care about story at all.”

“We have grown up in an age where there is nothing that cannot now, courtesy of computer-generated imagery, be convincingly rendered in the visual field.”

“I, made in England, felt excluded, miffed, resistant to the idea of even visiting India, a position of increasing absurdity as, one by one, backpacking friends returned from the place with the standard anecdotal combo of nirvanic epiphany and toilet horror.”

“By all means, become an abomination--but only while unhinged by grief or wrath.”

“It wasn't love at first sight. They ran into each other one morning in a sunny clearing in the forest. A few moments of stunned silence. `Glockenspiel,' Adam pronounced, thinking (but with terrible doubt) he'd found another animal in search of a name. When Eve approached him, proffering a handful of elderberries, he threw a stick at her and ran away.”

“I don't think things happen for a reason, but I think it's perfectly possible to experience life meaningfully.”

“We have all seen werewolf transformations hundreds of times on screen.”

“There are two ways to write a werewolf novel - you can examine the genre conventions, or you can say, 'What would it be like if I were a werewolf?'”

“Humans are moving into a new phase, one based on the knowledge that talking about their feelings has never got them anywhere.”

“In a fit of pique, I said to my agent, 'I'm going to write something you can sell.' The idea was to write a straight page-turner, with no literary conceits.”

“If I'm going to invest the time in a novel, I want something more than the entertainment you get out of most genre fiction.”

“You love life because life's all there is.”

“Fairy tales read before bed tend to make me dream. They're all quite violent stories, as are my dreams.”

“How was the light today?”“Big. Hot. Yellow-white. The sky’s blue was like a drumbeat. I watched the black tree shadows revolve. When the sun went down it was like someone’s hand was pulling it, very gently. It was soft-edged and orange. The land went purple, then dark blue and grey, then black. Then you opened your eyes.”

“I find the ideas of Catholicism incredibly rich and inspiring. Bogus, unfortunately, but nonetheless inspiring. I think they always provide an interesting nexus through which to look at the way we are.”