I wanted to be a poet when I was 20; I had no interest in fiction or biography and precious little interest in history, but those three elements in my life have become the most important.

There are certain people who seem doomed to buy certain houses. The house expects them. It waits for them.

The best years are when you know what you're doing.

People are much more interesting than people realise.

There are so many characters whizzing around inside my head, it's like Looney Tunes. But as soon as I've finished writing about them, I completely forget who they are.

The ordinary routines of life are never chronicled by the historian, but they make up almost the whole of experience.

I have always believed that the material world is governed by nonmaterial sources, so that in that sense 'English Music' is an exercise in the spiritual as well as the material. I have always been attracted to the Gothic and spiritual imagination, and I've always been interested in visionaries.