I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity. If you look really hard at almost anybody, and try to see why they're doing what they're doing, taking a dig at them ceases to be what you want to do even if you hate them.

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

In my mind's eye Shakespeare is a huge, hot sea-beast, with fire in his veins and ice on his claws and inscrutable eyes, who looks like an inchoate hump under the encrustations of live barnacle-commentaries, limpets and trailing weeds.

Narrative is one of the best intoxicants or tranquilisers.

I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity.

Funny way to spend your life, though, studying another chap's versifying.

Think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.