No one needs a first edition. Whoever wrote it; even if it was Moses.

Twenty years is, after all, a long time. We are not the same people we were. Old friends, lovers, even family members: they are strangers who happen to wear a familiar face. We have no right to claim to know anyone after such a distance.

The thing is, when everyone is trying to persuade you that a thing you know to be true isn't actually true, you start to believe them: not because it is true but because it's easier. It's just the easy way out.

I have to get out once a week and speak with people or I start thinking I'm the emperor of Abyssinia.

Perhaps living souls had greater phantom powers than the dead.

I'd defend the right for any novelist to experiment with form or language, but if people don't take to it, don't react by making out that they are thick.

I've been a professional writer for 20 years, and there are contours in that time, crescents and troughs.