I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'

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

We've got to believe in our beautiful impossible blueprints.

In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.

I've always disliked words like inspiration. Writing is probably like a scientist thinking about some scientific problem, or an engineer about an engineering problem.

Small things amuse small minds.

I don't know why I still find it so hard to accept that words are faulty and by their very nature innacurate