Disease has always been a much bigger killer of human beings than wars.

People talking about politics usually start from the ass end backwards in that they think you have a political agenda, and then you make your work fit that cookie cutter. It's the other way around. One works by simple observation, looking into things. It's usually called insight and out of that comes your view - not that you have the view first and then squash everything to make it fit. I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.

There is no fool like an educated fool.

It isn't chic for women to be drunk. Men drunks are more excusable, more easily absolved, but why? It must be thought they have better reasons.

Because you are never here but always there, I forget not you but what you look like You drift down the street in the rain, your face dissolving, changing shape, the colours running together My walls absorb you, breathe you forth again, you resume yourself, I do not recognize you You rest on the bed watching me watching you, we will never know each other any better than we do now

Anybody who writes a book is an optimist. First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Second, they think somebody's going to publish it. Third, they think somebody's going to read it. Fourth, they think somebody's going to like it. How optimistic is that?

My parents were gardeners themselves, and perforce they used environmental techniques because it was during the war, and you didn't have the new sorts of chemicals.