In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence.

I'm one of those writers who started off writing novels and came to writing short stories later, partly because I didn't have the right ideas, partly because I think that short stories are more difficult. I think learning to write short stories also made me attracted toward a paring down of the novel form.

...God knows you can have complication and difficulty without any compensating depth or seriousness

Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore superior.

I am death-fearing. I don't think I'm morbid. That seems to me a fear of death that goes beyond the rational. Whereas it seems to me to be entirely rational to fear death!

As I've explained to my wife many times, you have to kill your wife or mistress to get on the front page of the papers.

I dreamt that I woke up. It's the oldest dream of all, and I've just had it