Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.

We are told not to privilege one story above another. All the stories must be told. Well, maybe that's true, maybe all stories are worth hearing, but not all stories are worth telling.

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

If you should leave me, my heart will turn to water and flood away.

That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.

In this life, you have to be your own hero.