He'd come back, all open and helpless, and I suppose that's what won her around in the end. But it was so sad, because it was being himself that he found so difficult to cope with.

Sometimes maybe you need an experience. The experience can be a person or it can be a drug. The experience opens a door that was there all the time but you never saw it. Or maybe it blasts you into outer space...All that negative stuff. All the pain...It just floted away from me, I just floated away from it...up and away.

Try it. You don't have to do it ever again if you don't want to. But try it once. Try everything once.

In terms of sheer writing I might have done most of my work by 11. If you get up at 6:30 or 7 you can get a huge amount done by 11 and have the rest of the day off if you want to, though I have to check my accumulating e-mails. No one ever sends me horrible e-mails. Although some of my books are supposed to be hated, no one ever tells me.

Anarchy loves theatre. That's the whole point. People forget that. You have to laugh at the devil, not fight him. They'll always have more guns, they'll always have more bombs that go off with a bigger bang. No matter how revolting you become they'll always be willing to be more revolting to you. They've had so much more practice.

She wrote, 'Dandelion, I love you.' And I thought that was magic. It's not in you, it's between you. It's bigger and stronger than you are

I read all the time so it's difficult to say who my all-time favourites are. One is George Orwell, because he makes political writing so simple a child could understand it.