The trouble is that when most people are apathetic ordinary people ... have to go too far, have to ruin their lives and be made an object of scorn just to get the point across. Did they really think I'd rather be camping by a polluted river than sitting in my own flat with my things about me?

I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.

I want to get to the end and feel that I've done all I could, given the limitations and given the opportunities.

Yes, the past is another country, but one that we can visit, and once there we can bring back the things we need.

Myths hook and bind the mind because at the same time they set the mind free: they explain the universe while allowing the universe to go on being unexplained; and we seem to need this even now, in our twentieth-century grandeur.

I didn't mind being unpopular at school, because everyone else was a heathen.

Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.