The more melancholy side of my literary personality is much in tune with BS Johnson's.

You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it.

For many weeks after [my wife] died, I could not get used to the feeling of coldness and lifelessness on her side of the bed - and it was even worse when they took the body away and buried her.

As soon as you start writing about how human beings interact with each other socially, you're into politics, aren't you?

I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning.

Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are.

Revisionist historians are about to get their hands on the Thatcher years, shes probably going to be looked at again because she feels far enough away now, and we dont see her much on the political landscape in this country, shes kind of disappeared and she doesnt speak out much anymore.