Closure is a greasy little word which, moreover, describes a nonexistent condition. The truth, Venus, is that nobody gets over anything.

Deciding to write a novel about something - as opposed to finding you are writing a novel around something - sounds to me like a good evocation of writer's block.

I would say I'm an ironist not a satirist. All you do is you take existing tendencies and crank them up, just turn up the volume dial. Which is a technique of science fiction, apart from anything else.

Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black.

When we read, we are doing more than delectating words on a page stories, characters, images, notions. We are communing with the mind of the author.

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

He was in a terrible state- that of consciousness.