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.

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

I had no sense of any reputation that What a Carve Up! might acquire - at the time I didnt even have a publisher, so my main worry was whether it was even going to see the light of day or not.

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.

Well, I like the rain before it falls.

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