Present-day Spain translates as many books into Spanish, annually, as the Arab world has translated into Arabic in the past 1,100 years.

Everyone is right up there at the very brink of their pain limit.

He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed.

Novelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour.

All my adult life I have been searching for the right adjective to describe my father's peculiarly aggressive comic style. I recently settled on 'defamatory.

I say the sentences again and again in my head until they sound right.

Mere fact has no chance of being formally perfect. It will get in the way, it will be all elbows.