As the books grew bigger and more ambitious, the situations in question sometimes became political ones, and so it became necessary to start painting in the social background on a scale which eventually became panoramic.

It seems to me that you would have to write a novel on a very small, intimate scale for it not to become political.

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

I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.

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

But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.