No novel has ever changed anything, as far as I can see.

Unless I specifically inform you otherwise, I'm always smoking another cigarette.

Who's straight? I'm not. I am bent gouged pinched and tugged at, and squeezed into this funny shape. Each life is a game of chess that went to hell on the seventh move, and now the flukey play is cramped and slow, a dream of constraint and cross-purpose, with each move forced, all pieces pinned and skewered and zugzwanged... But here and there we see these figures who appear to run on the true lines, and they are terrible examples. They're rich, usually.

It's tremendously important how you get on with the other sex. Your life record on that is incredibly important. You never really think about any of your other achievements.

My belief is that everything that's written about you is actually secondary showbiz nonsense, and you shouldn't take any notice of it.

I always do my draft in long hand because even the ink is part of the flow.

My father once said there's a correlation between a nation's cuisine and its people: England, nice people, nasty food; France, nice food, nasty people; Spain, nice people, nasty food; Italy, nice people, nice food; and Germany, nasty food, nasty people. And I've always thought that there must be something terribly wrong with the German character - and that there is, really.