I find wholly baffling the widespread belief today that the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was an immoral act, even possibly a war crime to rank with Nazi genocide.

A visit to Père Lachaise in Paris adds a year to one's life

My brief stay at the hospital had already convinced me that the medical profession was an open door to anyone nursing a grudge against the human race.

I don't think any particular painters have inspired me, except in a general sense. It was more a matter of corroboration. The visual arts, from Manet onwards, seemed far more open to change and experiment than the novel, though that's only partly the fault of the writers. There's something about the novel that resists innovation.

Our lives today are not conducted in linear terms. They are much more quantified; a stream of random events is taking place.

'What was being on the moon literally like?' [. . .] 'Being on the moon?' His tired gaze inspected the narrow street of cheap jewellery stores, with its office messengers and lottery touts, the off-duty taxi-drivers leaning against their cars. 'It was just like being here.'

Fiction is a branch of neurology