Basically, particularly in Britain, it's a hegemonic thing that people who write tend to come from the leisure classes. They can afford the time and the books.

His eyes are wild, psychotic slits that bat-dance in your soul looking for good things to crush or bad elements to identify with.

You've got first-generation Americans here who are going to be poorer than their parents. That's never happened in the States before, and it's going to have massive social repercussions here.

It's hard to maintain both smack and crack habbits and remember to keep up mobile-phone payments.

I think that there are just so many people that can't afford not to have Obama win. He's gotten so many disenfranchised people back into the political system that if he didn't win, the disillusionment in America and the idea of more of the same failed policies of the last eight years [2000-2008], internationally and domestically, would be so bad for the country and the world as a whole.

When you start off with your first book, people assume that you're like all the characters in the book - and it does complicate things, when you're being constantly bombarded with it, but you have to embrace it.

He emphasised basic truths: you are not dying yet, you have to live your life until you are. Underpinning them was the belief that the grim reality of impending death can be talked away by trying to invest in the present reality of life. I didn’t believe that at the time, but now I do. By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be.