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

Use your imagination and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care.

There's something rather wonderful about the fact that Oxford is a very small city that contains most of the cultural and metropolitan facilities you could want, in terms of bookshops, theatre, cinema, conversation. But it's near enough to London to get here in an hour, and it's near enough to huge open spaces without which I would go insane.

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

Then he asked if I didn’t like things changing. And I said I wouldn’t mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example, which is one of the biggest changes you can imagine, apart from becoming a girl or dying.

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.

Show me the artist anywhere who's had an utterly stable mental life, and I'll buy you hot dinners for the rest of your life.