Aeneas carried his aged father on his back from the ruins of Troy and so do we all, whether we like it or not, perhaps even if we have never known them.

There are lots of things that you can brush under the carpet about yourself until you're faced with somebody whose needs won't be put off.

Irish was a man of parts even if some of them didn't work too well.

Stars on our door, stars in our eyes, stars exploding in the bits of our brains where the common sense should have been

It may be the first in what I trust will be a rapidly growing and influential genre--the novel designed on purpose to be excludedfrom the Booker short-list.

The only time I ever iron the sheets or make meringues is when there is an ... urgent deadline in the offing.

The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown.