He was in a terrible state- that of consciousness.

When communism failed, it wasn't a good idea that had gone wrong, it was a bad idea that had been sustained with incredible determination in the face of all the commonsense arguments, and at the cost of 20 million lives at least, in Russia, to build the socialist Utopia.

It's been said that happiness writes white. It doesn't show up on the page. When you're on holiday and writing a letter home to a friend, no one wants a letter that says the food is good and the weather is charming and the accommodations comfortable. You want to hear about lost passports and rat-filled shacks.

To idealize: all writing is a campaign against cliché. Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart.

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

I think a lot of people who read fiction are interested in subtlety. But they wouldn't like my stuff. It's a bit too violent for many tastes.

At its grandest, political correctness is an attempt to accelerate evolution.