Creative Writing was not a form of psychotherapy, in ways both sublime and ridiculuous, it clearly was, precisely that.

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

On buses and trains, I always think about the inexhaustible variety of human genes. We see types, and occasionally twins, but never doubles. All faces are unique, and this is exhilarating, despite the increasingly plastic similarity of TV stars and actors.

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.

Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish one sensation, fire, from the other, frost.

I was no good at being a child.