I don't see myself as some kind of lone figure standing out there and doing my work in solitary splendour, but as part of the human condition and part of the continuum of writers.

London is a small place, and it is very incestuous. People know where you live. Everybody is sort of on top of each other.

Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won't help you.

Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.

You said, 'I'm going to leave him because my love for you makes any other life a lie.' I've hidden these words in the lining of my coat. I take them out like a jewel thief when no-one's watching. They haven't faded. Nothing about you has faded. You are still the colour of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it's not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which?

Capacity for love in its higher forms seems to be peculiarly human although even in humans it is still peculiar.

I dreamed I was a single moment in a single day. A note struck and vanished. A sounding. A reckoning. Gone.