I strike up conversations all the time and it is very interesting, finding out about things I know nothing about.

London has always provided the landscape for my imagination. It becomes a character - a living being - within each of my books.

No poet is ever completely lost. He has the secret of his childhood safe with him, like some secret cave in which he can kneel. And, when we read his poetry, we can join him there.

I am in the Pitte, but I have gone so deep that I can see the brightness of the Starres at Noon.

Familial love can find an echo in our own hearts just as it did in that of Charles Dickens.

I detest self-regard. If my work has taught me anything, it is that self-aggrandisement is completely unhistorical.

Under the force of the imagination, nature itself is changed.