What is pertinent is the calmness of beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it.

What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.

One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event.

Now when I look back to the Guildford of that time it seems far more exotic to me than Nagasaki.

I think it's quite difficult to understand what kind of life a writer leads. They might be millionaires, or they might be starving people.

I was a little concerned that a lot of people thought I wrote Merchant Ivory movies. I also thought if I was ever going to write something strange and difficult, that was the time.

I wouldn't want to try to adapt something of my own. It would be like going back to school and doing all my exams again.