Ideally, I would create a book so interdependent and self-sustaining in its parts, so wondrously connected word by word and paragraph by paragraph, so charged with the joy of language, that it would actually float three or four inches above any table where you try to set it down.

You'll never get anything done if you walk around with an unchipped heart.

My first real breakthrough collided with the last months of Callaghan's Labour government, which had every intention of enjoying my success as much as I did.

In violence there is often the quality of yearning - the yearning for completion. For closure. For that which is absent and would if present bring to fulfillment. For the body without which the wing is a useless frozen ornament. ("A Short Guide To The City")

I write longer sentences than most of the others, maybe because I probably like Henry James more than they do.

If I planned everything out in advance, I'd expire of boredom.

I instantly chucked my academic ambitions and began writing fiction full-time.