The world is full of people who have lost faith: politicians who have lost faith in politics, social workers who have lost faith in social work, schoolteachers who have lost faith in teaching and, for all I know, policemen who have lost faith in policing and poets who have lost faith in poetry. It's a condition of faith that it gets lost from time to time, or at least mislaid.

I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.

Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.

Creativity doesn't flourish in an atmosphere of despotism, coercion and fear.

Love, always love. Perhaps that’s what we’re all looking for.

Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.

Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.