America is proud of what it does to its writers, the way it breaks and bedevils them, rendering them deluded or drunken or dead by their own hands. To overpower its tender spirits makes America feel tough. Careers are generally short.

Tremendous interest in the superficial is very characteristic of cultures in decline.

When things are going well, you do have the sense that what you’re writing is being fed to you in some way. Auden compared writing a poem to cleaning an old piece of slate until the letters appear. The only way you could reveal your god is perhaps under hypnosis. It’s sacred and it’s secret, even to the writer.

It's good fun to create an unpredictable character. When he comes into the room, I don't know what he's going to do - I have to find my way.

In America, the policeman is a working-class hero. In England, the policeman is a working-class traitor.

America has had much more respect for its writers because they had to define what America was. America wasn't sure what it was.

When I see a lot of young faces in the audience, it's just sort of sinking in how important that is. Because you're old enough now to identify them very strongly as being young - whereas before, of course they were young, because you were young. Now it's not like that.