Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It's nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that...Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and sob probes, and you would mark them. Women--and they can be wives, lovers, gaunt muses, fat nurses, obsessions, devourers, exes, nemeses--will wake and turn to these men and ask, with female need-to-know, "What is it?" And the men will say, "Nothing. No it isn't anything really. Just sad dreams.

If every inhabitant of a liberal democracy believes in liberal democracy, then it doesn't matter what creed or colour they are.

It is terrible to see someone being beaten up by the English language.

No-one is going to sit down and read Bleak House to the family any more, but they can all huddle up happily in front of Charles Bronson.

The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone.

Kingsley Amis was a lenient father. His paternal style, in the early years, can best be described as amiably minimalist - in other words, my mother did it all.

We have a huge institution that celebrates the undistinguished, an institution which is nearly as old as the Papists. It's been going on for millennia. What else is a monarchy but a series of ridiculously exalted figures who are not necessarily distinguished at all? In fact, they have a rather philistine tradition. So perhaps we are more vulnerable to it than other countries.