The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the concerns of fiction.

The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the concerns of fiction.

There's a fearful term that's in fashion at the moment - closure. People apparently believe it is desirable and attainable.

I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children.

Grief-stricken. Stricken is right; it is as though you had been felled. Knocked to the ground; pitched out of life and into something else.

There's a preoccupation with memory and the operation of memory and a rather rapacious interest in history.

The idea that memory is linear is nonsense. What we have in our heads is a collection of frames. As to time itself-can it be linear when all these snatches of other presents exist at once in your mind? A very elusive and tricky concept, time.