I did a lot of my writing as though I was an academic, doing some piece of research as perfectly as possible.

I am a profound pessimist both about life and about human relations and about politics and ecology. Humans are inadequate and stupid creatures who sooner or later make a mess, and those who are trying to do good do a lot more damage than those who are muddling along.

For my true thoughts have spent more time in your company than in anyone else's, these last two or three months, and where my thoughts are, there am I, in truth".

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

One of the reasons I've gotten so attached to talking to scientists is that... they know there is a reality.

I'm not very interested in myself. I do have a deep moral belief that you should always look out at other things and not be self-centred.

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