The worst superstition is to consider our own tolerable.

What I had that others didn't was a capacity for sticking to it.

I never thought of London in terms of possible heroes - of course, there are thousands. It's a very talented city.

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.

There's an unconscious bias in our society: girls are wonderful; boys are terrible. And to be a boy, or young man, growing up, having to listen to all this, it must be painful.

What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared.

Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse.