Bad luck for both of us, we are both boulder-pushers.

I am a person who continually destroys the possibilities of a future because of the numbers of alternative viewpoints I can focus on the present.

I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot.

The current publishing scene is extremely good for the big, popular books. They sell them brilliantly, market them and all that. It is not good for the little books. And really valuable books have been allowed to go out of print. In the old days, the publishers knew that these difficult books, the books that appeal only to a minority, were very productive in the long run. Because they're probably the books that will be read in the next generation.

[Some people think] that storytelling is telling jokes. So they have to be discouraged! Then others think that storytelling-is like an encounter group . . .

I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married.

My father was in the First World War.