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.

One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.

The thing I think about is that once you've done it, you then start to think about what you're going to do next. It's much easier to follow something that's not been as successful as this.

Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.

We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours