The poetry and transgression that was so much of surrealism's anarchic force has been recruited into mainstream culture. It has been made commonplace by television and magazine merchandising, by computer games and Internet visuals, by film and MTV, by the fashion shoot.

Recasting fairy tales has become a publishing sub-genre in itself, and has been done both well and to the point of entropy. More interesting are those works where the structures of fairytales are abandoned but the world of 'fairy' is imported as a delicate spice.

Repression in the human psyche is tightly bundled. When it has been pulled out of the sprung package so often it is perhaps difficult to push it back in the box.

Why can’t our job here on earth be simply to inspire each other?

Since I've been hired to contribute to the storyline of 'Doom 4' I can say what was always true anyway. I'm working. You see, for a writer, lots of stuff that doesn't look like working is actually working. Looking out of the window, for example. Balancing a pencil on the edge of the desk in order to find its exact fulcrum. Playing 'Doom.

I am less interested in ghosts than in people who see ghosts.

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.