If you see the world as gloomily as I see it, the only thing to do is laugh or shoot yourself.

Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.... There's a feeling of relief and satisfaction when you get to the end. A feeling that you have brought your family, your characters, home. Then a sort of post-natal depression and then, very quickly, the horizon of a new book. The consolation that next time I will do it better.

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.

If you see the world as gloomily as I see it, the only thing to do is laugh or shoot yourself.

The longing we have to communicate cleanly and directly with people is always obstructed by qualifications and often with concern about how our messages will be received.

I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man.

If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing.