I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

Most mainstream male fiction is littered with heroines, and female characters are basically so great, you want to fall in love with them.

...and I confess that, like a child, I cry. Ah, self-pity; I think we are at our most honest and sincere when we feel sorry for ourselves.

The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others

It's a library, only the stupid or the evil are afraid of those

I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others.

There's an old Sysan saying that the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.