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.

You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.

Our days weave together the simple pleasures of daily life, which we should never take for granted, and the higher pleasures of Art and Thought which we may now taste as we please, with none to forbid or criticise.

I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.

I don't think it is an easy thing to write and expect to be commercial, even if you are from Venus and a hermaphrodite.

They took to silence. They touched each other without comment and without progression. A hand on a hand, a clothed arm, resting on an arm. An ankle overlapping an ankle, as they sat on a beach, and not removed. One night they fell asleep, side by side... He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase.

We two remake our world by naming it / Together, knowing what words mean for us / And for the other for whom current coin / Is cold speech - but we say, the tree, the pool, / And see the fire in the air, the sun, our sun, / Anybody's sun, the world's sun, but here, now / Particularly our sun.