I wish I'd known at the beginning that all I really had to do is trust myself. Everything would work out as if by magic once I actually leaned back into my imagination and just let it work, and not question it and not fret about it.

To do magic, to do great magic, he has to know himself as a piece of the universe.A piece of the universe?A little piece that has all the rest of it in it. Everything outside of him is also inside of him.

What was the worst thing you've ever done? I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me...the most dreadful thing.

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.

To feel our character, our personality, and our personal, hard-won history fade from being is to be exposed to whatever lies beneath these comforting, operational conveniences. What remains when the conscious and functioning self has been erased is mankind's fundamental condition – irrational, violent, guilt-wracked, despairing, and mad.

An average working day begins at 8 or 9 am, includes an hour for lunch, and ends at 5 or 6 pm.

I wish I could go back and re-write my first novel for the first time. Because I really didn't know what I was doing, and although it was published, it is, after all this time, kind of an embarrassment.