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.

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

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.

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.

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.

It is, of course, the first recourse of every elitist to see social barbarism in others.

The mist hung in the air like a prancing unicorn.