The moon hung over the planet Earth, a dead thing over a dying thing.

He felt himself in suspension between the two worlds, the warm, neat civilization behind his back, the cool, dark mystery outside. We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

Piers is always going on about how he hated Stowe. As if that solves everything, as if to hate something means it can't have affected you.

Our present educational systems are all paramilitary. Their aim is to produce servants or soldiers who obey without question and who accepts their training as the best possible training. Those who are most successful in the state are those who have the most interest in prolonging the state as it is; they are also those who have the most say in the educational system, and in particular by ensuring that the educational product they want is the most highly rewarded.

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

There is no plan. All is hazard. And the only thing that will preserve us is ourselves.

Wealth is a monster. It takes a month to learn to control it financially. And many years to learn to control it psychologically.