I suppose I'm the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it's the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other.

We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.

The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds.

All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I'd got somewhere, then I found I had to go on.

To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.

I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?