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

He really did not care whether he survived or not, so long as it rendered him unconscious and absolved him of responsibility.

I've worked in television long enough to know that when you stop enjoying that type of thing you go home and do something else.

I think I've learnt that there is no character so strange that you haven't shared their experience in some small way.

... why I like timetables, because they make sure I don't get lost in time.

As to the number of novels I've abandoned... I shudder to think. I have thrown away five completed novels, and that's a gruesome enough figure. But not necessarily a waste of effort.

He was asking too many questions and he was asking them too quickly. They were stacking up in my head like loaves in the factory where Uncle Terry works. The factory is a bakery and he operates the slicing machines. And sometimes a slicer is not working fast enough but the bread keeps coming and there is a blockage. I sometimes think of my mind as a machine, but not always as a bread-slicing machine. It makes it easier to explain to other people what is going on inside it.