Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don't admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It's the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.

Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing.

We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love, so rarely mentioned now by philosophers, can once again be made central.

Hegel says that Truth is a great word and the thing is greater still. With Dave we never seemed to get past the word.

The theatre is a tragic place, full of endings and partings and heartbreak.

We shall be better prepared for the future if we see how terrible, how doomed the present is.