Bore children, and they stop reading. There's no room for self-indulgence or showing off or setting the scene.

I do not like strangers because I do not like people I have never met before. They are hard to understand.

And Father said, "Christopher, do you understand that I love you?" And I said "Yes," because loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth, and Father looks after me when I get into trouble, like coming to the police station, and he looks after me by cooking meals for me, and he always tells me the truth, which means that he loves me.

I went to boarding school and then I went to Oxford, and I know how easy it is for certain groups of people to become wholly insulated from ordinary life.

I could invent another world. I'm not terribly keen on this one.

I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? I read the King James Bible, as all English writers should. And when I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them.

Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves.