My literary career kicked off in 1956 when, as a resident of Swansea, South Wales, I published my first novel, 'Lucky Jim.

People look at fame and feel deprived if they haven't got it, feeling that this is a basic, almost a human right, a civil right. And also feel the same way about wealth, I suppose - why haven't I got it?

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.

He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed.

Style isn't something added on; it's intrinsic to the perceptions and the way you see life.

One thing you can't help noticing in South America and in Latin culture, generally, is how nice people are. Although when I went back to Spain - my mother lived in Spain and both my brothers lived there - after the Uruguay trip, I thought, "Oh great, Hispanic people." But they weren't nearly as nice as the Uruguayans. They're quite proud and pissed off, the Spaniards.

when the sky is as grey as this - impeccably grey, a denial, really of the very concept of colour - and the stooped millions lift their heads, it's hard to tell the air from the impurities in our human eyes, as if the sinking climbing paisley curlicues of grit were part of the element itself, rain, spores, tears, film, dirt. Perhaps, at such moments, the sky is no more then the sum of the dirt that lives in our human eyes.