Pain hardens, and great pain hardens greatly, whatever the comforters say, and suffering does not ennoble, though it may occasionally lend a certain rigid dignity of manner to the suffering frame.

I watch a lot of sport on television. I only watch certain sports, and I only watch them live - I don't think I've ever been able to watch a replay of a match or game of which the result was already decided. I feel bound to cheat and look up what can be looked up.

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.

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the second world war.