I did not fully understand the dread term 'terminal illness' until I saw Heathrow for myself.

God, I'm such a lazy writer - I can't even think up new names.

The more my work improves or broadens or widens, the more surely I tame myself.

There's no end to the inventiveness of critics, I tell you. Because they can't write fiction, they put their impulse into their analysis of work.

Religion, you can't a handle on it, you just have to know or not know-people either believe or they don't believe.

Politics is still crucially important. Our choices are vital, and we've got to make them and not just say, 'Oh they're all the same.' They are all the same in certain ways, alas - a political animal is such an animal.

The thing about imagination is that by the very act of putting it down, there must be some truth in one's own imagination.