I still feel threatened by academics, but my books have a lot of academic in-jokes and everybody assumes I went to university and studied English.

How many people want to read about three disreputable pigs and a dopey wolf with a disposition towards house demolition?

...being written by someone who might not quite understand the subconscious nuance of the character leaves us in varying degrees of flatness.

The inspiration comes from everywhere, from what I grew up with. There's so much silliness and nonsense in the world that we regard as normal working procedure. The satirical point of the view may be to counterpoint that. The way we look at classics has been hijacked by the intelligentsia - Shakespeare is highbrow and seen as something clever people do, which isn't right at all. I basically pull inspiration from everywhere.

Growth purely for its own sake is the philosophy of cancer.

Cash is always the deciding factor in such matters of moral politics; nothing ever gets done unless motivated by commerce or greed.

Marriage is an honorable estate and should not be used simply as an excuse for legal intercourse.