When I started writing fiction it always seemed in retrospect (I didn't realise at the time) that it was always caused by environments rather than by incidents and characters.

One doesn't mind adverse criticism so long as it isn't stupid.

I don't think things necessarily should have a meaning. If stuff has a meaning then why do [writing] about it? If you're trying to say, 'Tall buildings are great' why not just leave it at that: "Tall buildings are great."

When I first started writing in my early 20s it was literary criticism for a very eccentric magazine called Books And Bookmen, which allowed me to write, more or less anything.

Vertigo doesn't apply in planes for some reason. You think it's some kind of magic and you don't know how it's keeping you up, but when you're on a cliff top it's a different matter.

When I started writing fiction it always seemed in retrospect (I didn't realise at the time) that it was always caused by environments rather than by incidents and characters.

I think that cheap music often does make you dream more than more serious music, whether that's serious music by Beethoven or Miles Davis or Pink Floyd... if the Floyd ever did serious music, which I seriously doubt.