The sad fact is that I love Dickens and Donne and Keats and Eliot and Forster and Conrad and Fitzgerald and Kafka and Wilde and Orwell and Waugh and Marvell and Greene and Sterne and Shakespeare and Webster and Swift and Yeats and Joyce and Hardy, really, really love them. It’s just that they don’t love me back.

Being a decent human being will require effort and energy.

You must do what you enjoy.

Of course you should study whatever you want. The written appreciation and understanding of literature, or any kind of artistic endeavour, is absolutely central to a decent society. Why d'you think books are the first things that the fascists burn?

Fear and anxiety are great motivators for me.

Cuddling was for great aunts and teddy bears. Cuddling gave him cramp.

So - whatever happened to you?' 'Life. Life happened.