..because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.

People say that you always have to tell the truth. But they do not mean this because you are not allowed to tell old people that they are old and you are not allowed to tell people if they smell funny or if a grown-up has made a fart. And you are not allowed to say, 'I don't like you,' unless that person has been horrible to you.

Fiction that responds to recent world events is a hostage to fortune because all momentous events look very different a year, two years, three years later.

Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.

And this shows that sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.

Science and literature give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer.

As a teenager, I was always this strange mixture of kind of vice-captain of the rugby team and sensitive artist type the rest of the time. I was sent away to this public school in the middle of nowhere, and I think we managed to completely miss out on normal youth culture.