I've been asked which of the other arts novel-writing is most like, and I have come to believe it is acting. Of course, in terms of pattern it can be like music, in terms of structure it can be like painting, but the job to me is most like acting.

Art you can flush down the loo means nothing to me, even were the loo to be selected by Marcel Duchamp

Once upon a time, I thought that politics was the name we gave to our higher instincts. That was before Margaret Thatcher, who came to power when I was 11 years old.

The idea that people in novels should be more sympathetic than people in life simply baffles me.

As an old creative industry full of cruelty and moral sense, British journalism once flourished on the imperative that people required the truth in order to survive. But people don't require that now. They want sensation and they want it for nothing.

It was beguiling to live in a country, Scotland, that didn't look enough like itself to be a location for its own movies... I remember consulting a film book and discovering that Arthur Freed decided to shoot Brigadoon in Hollywood because nowhere in Scotland looked Scottish enough.

Always trust strangers, it's the people you know that let you down.