Objectivity is just male subjectivity.

I like the idea of a big caesura between the narratives, a space which readers can fill in with their own speculative history.

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

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.

I like the rain before it falls. of course there is no such thing, she said. That's why it's my favorite. Something can still make you happy, can't it, even if it isn't real.

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.