It is very difficult, it is perhaps impossible, for someone who loves his mother to love the woman whom your father left her for.

The air itself was ebony, like the denial, the refutation, of the idea of light.

Love might have expanded her. But we are not all of us going to get loved. We are not all of us going to get expanded.

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.

The only writer who gives me unfeigned pleasure is P.G. Wodehouse. And even him I find a bit heavy. He takes a lot out of me. Scratching my hair, with soft whistles, with lips aquiver, I frown over Sunset at Blandings.

My father always had doubts about the Booker prize, although they evaporated on the announcement that he had won it.

I don't think I've ever been particularly scared of death - but scared of dying, the process. It doesn't seem to be a good way of doing it.