There are times, they occur with increasing frequency nowadays, when I seem to know nothing, when everything I know seems to have fallen out of my mind like a shower of rain, and I am gripped for a moment in paralysed dismay, waiting for it all to come back but with no certainty that it will.

In my books you have to concentrate, but I work hard to make it that, when you do, the rewards are quite high.

I never went to university. I'm self-educated. I didn't go because I was too impatient, too arrogant.

All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.

I think I'm less the writer than I'm the written.

That's one of the many things I hate about life, that it's a hideously cliched business.

You will remember this when all else fades, this moment, here, together, by this well. There will be certain days, and certain nights, you’ll feel my presence near you, hear my voice. You’ll think you have imagined it and yet, inside you, you will catch an answering cry. On April evenings, when the rain has ceased, your heart will shake, you’ll weep for nothing, pine for what’s not there. For you, this life will never be enough, there will forever be an emptiness, where once the god was all in all in you.