...and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything

And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end

I've written 16 children's books and five unpublished novels. Some of the latter were breathtakingly bad.

Indeed, I am repeatedly astonished by the number of really good writers who understand human beings so well on paper but don't know how to deal with them in real life.

I think the U.K. is too small to write about from within it and still make it seem foreign and exotic and interesting.

I am really interested in eccentric minds. It's rather like being fascinated by how cars work. It's really boring if your car works all the time. But as soon as something happens, you get the bonnet up. If someone has an abnormal or dysfunctional state of mind, you get the bonnet up.

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