By the eighteenth book, one has a sense of having bricked oneself into a niche, a roosting place for other people's pigeons. I wouldn't recommend it.

They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency of lives which, needing nothing, were never dissapointed.

Put a higher value on yourself. Being hyper-realistic about everything is too simple a get-out.

Consumerism is so weird. Its a sort of conspiracy we collude in. Youd think shoppers spending their hard-earned cash would be highly critical. You know that the manufacturers are trying to have you on.

If you're against globalisation, it doesn't achieve much by sort of bombing the head offices of Shell or Nestle. You unsettle people much more by blowing up an Oxfam shop because people can't understand the motive.

The endless newsreel clips of nuclear explosions that we saw on TV in the 1960s (were) a powerful incitement to the psychotic imagination, sanctioning *everything*.

Fiction is a branch of neurology