By the usual reckoning, the worst books make the best films.

A guilty system recognizes no innocents.

I've always loved Scotland, and I'm not a huge fan of big cities, to be honest. I like them to dip into for a bit, but I'm not sure I would want to live in one again.

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

Political correctness is what right-wing bigots call what everybody else calls being polite

But it was pointless, it was stupid; he thought about thoughtless things. If I were a seabird . . . but how could you be a seabird? If you were a seabird your brain would be tiny and stupid and you would love half-rotted fish guts and tweaking the eyes out of little grazing animals; you would know no poetry and you could never appreciate flying as fully as the human on the ground yearning to be you. If you wanted to be a seabird you deserved to be one.

It was the day my grandmother exploded.