Failure concentrates the mind wonderfully. If you don't make mistakes, you're not trying hard enough.

You have many fine qualities that I admire. But you are out of time. You should have been born a century ago, when values such as yours meant something.

Words are like leaves,. . .like people really, fond of their own society.

How fishy on the fishiness scale? Ten is a stickleback and one is a whale shark." "A whale isn't a fish, Thursday." "A whale shark is--sort of." "All right, it's as fishy as a crayfish." "A crayfish isn't a fish." "A starfish, then." "Still not a fish." "This is a very odd conversation, Thursday.

Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world.

Scientific thought - indeed, any mode of thought, whether it be religious or philosophical or anything else - is just like the fashions that we wear - only much longer lived. It's a little like a boy band.

Writing is not something you can do or you can't. It's not even something that 'other people do' or 'for smart people only' or even 'for people who finished school and went to University'. Nonsense. Anyone can do it. But no-one can do it straight off the bat. Like plastering, brain surgery or assembling truck engines, you have to do a bit of training - get your hands dirty - and make some mistakes.