And I didn't know I loved her till I'd dreamt of her. I didn't know it was the real thing until an illusion had signalled it.

I do my thinking while I walk. It just loosens up the mind in the way that you don't get when you are sitting at a desk.

I had a fear of becoming anything, a fear of becoming a specialist. I might have become a doctor, but if you become a doctor, that's your specialty in life and you are defined by it. One of the attractions of being a writer is that you're never a specialist. Your field is entirely open; your field is the entire human condition.

There has always been, for me, this other world, this second world to fall back on--a more reliable world in so far as it does not hide that its premise is illusion.

How quick and rushing life can sometimes seem, when at the same time it's so slow and sweet and everlasting.

I respond to the sound of London being spoken - to the sound of London.

All novelists must form their personal pacts in some way with the slowness of their craft. There are some who demand of themselves a 'rate of production,' for whom it's a matter of pride to complete, say, a book every year.