Poets seem to write more easily about love than prose writers. For a start, they own that flexible ‘I’…. Then again, poets seem able to turn bad love – selfish, shitty love – into good love poetry. Prose writers lack this power of admirable, dishonest transformation. We can only turn bad love into prose about bad love. So we are envious (and slightly distrustful) when poets talk to us of love.

Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction.

There's nothing wrong with being a genius who can fascinate the young. Rather, there's something wrong with the young who can't be fascinated by a genius.

Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well at the same time.

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.

If you’re that clever you can argue yourself into anything.

History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us.