It's just that to a lot of British people George Bush represents the worst of all things American. He's the right-wing Christian crusader, the toxic Texan who refused Kyoto, the poll-cheat eel who undermined democracy on the back of something called 'chads,' a notion we've never entirely grasped.

If I couldn't get published tomorrow I'd still be writing. It's something to do with feeling so overwhelmed by this experience of life that you have to tell someone about it, and in a way that reorders the experience to make it manageable.

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

What I mean is this: you meet someone, you think about them. You're already changing because of the way you think about them. You meet them again, you think about them some more, you're changing again. And on it goes. You are changing right now. Before my eyes.

Some people feed you with love.

Rome is a place almost worn out by being looked at, a city collapsing under the weight of reference.

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.