I think what I like to do is to begin with the ordinary and find the extraordinary in it.

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.

Today's news, which may be yesterday's anyway, will be eclipsed tomorrow.

When I am writing, I'm very much on the ground, on the same ground my characters are treading.

Possibly he knew, as he wrote this, that he was mad - because inside every madman sits a little sane man saying 'You're mad, you're mad.'

I share my name with an aerobatic bird that can whiz across a whole summer sky in seconds. A swift is so equipped for speed that it can scarcely cope with being stationary.

What we wish upon the future is very often the image of some lost, imagined past.