A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children.

I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.

A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children.

In England, everyone believes if you think, then you don't feel. But all my novels are about joining together thinking and feeling.

...it is not possible to create the opposite of what one has always known, simply because the opposite is believed to be desired. Human beings need what they already know, even horrors.

That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them.

I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not.