I did not understand the differences between Catholic and Protestant until I was an adult.

[My muse] likes to inhabit tea leaves, sunlight filtered through bamboo, melancholy clouds over the Devon coastline, a weedy railroad crossing in the Southern States, bubblegum pop from the sixties, torch songs from the forties, undersea caves where B-movie octopi grapple with men in loincloths, sacred groves of pink anime dryads, Victorian fairy paintings executed by gentlemen in lunatic asylums and so on.

It's interesting, the sense of pastoral utopia that exists in so much fantasy - in [Edward ] Dunsany, [John R.R.] Tolkien and so on.

My favourite tea is lapsang souchong.

I don't believe in sexual love.

I think I still have [commemorative coin ] somewhere. Why was this given to me? I think every child in the country must have received one [ from Queen's Silver Jubilee]. That's the last time that I recall something of an innocent, more-or-less unquestioning monarchist patriotism in Britain.

The cultural products of America from this period [ fifties and sixties] are like a vision of paradise or something. I find it utterly intoxicating.