For me, it's always been the initial business - just getting a word down, any words down, on a blank piece of paper. Once I've done that, I'm away. Beginning is one half of the deed.

I've not much faith in the future of the planet and I'm not just thinking about Mr. Bush or global warming. I feel that we've lost our way and it looks as if, in so many fields, things are turning sour. Even democracy is turning sour, isn't it?

I always drink at lunchtime. It helps my imagination.

There are terrible disasters and tragedies and miseries all over the place, in places like Africa with the atrocities in Darfur, India until recently, and China. So many of them have been brought to our notice by television that we've almost become inured to cruelty and disasters and hopelessness in the world. We don't seem to have made an awfully good job of running things as a sort of planetary cabinet.

For me, it's always been the initial business - just getting a word down, any words down, on a blank piece of paper. Once I've done that, I'm away. Beginning is one half of the deed.

There's always time for one more pint. - Chief Inspector Morse

I write every day when I'm at home - trying to catch up with correspondence.