Every book for me is a chapter in the long book which will finally be closed on the day of my death.

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

When I was a child I wanted to be Pope. My greatest disappointment is missing out on that. I also wanted to be a tap dancer but I never fulfilled that ambition either.

I never read in bed, only in my study.

In London, I've always lived within 10 miles of where I was born. You see, there is something called a spirit of place, and my place happens to be London, at least once a fortnight.

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.

A triptych in which the presiding deities are Mother, England and Me.