Objectivity is just male subjectivity.

As I said, I had no publisher for What a Carve Up! while I was writing it, so all we had to live off was my wife's money and little bits I was picking up for journalism.

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

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

Well, I like the rain before it falls.

My only regret is that I signed away the world rights and in America they've been far and away my most successful books, but I never saw a cent from any of it.

The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me.