We need myths to get by. We need story; otherwise the tremendous randomness of experience overwhelms us. Story is what penetrates.

I see no reason to stop writing. But the reason isn't always one of your own. The mind is not invulnerable, and it can lose some of its powers.

There's no need to inundate the world with books and language. It's just too full already. There's so much rubbish hiding in the world. But as long as I think I can do something inventive and insightful, then I'll keep doing it.

What I saw quite clearly in the '80s, before the internet, was that the whole world was shifting toward digital formats, and that didn't matter whether it's movies or writing or whatever. It was something that was coming. And with the invention of the World Wide Web in the early '90s, when we were teaching our first courses, or the arrival of the internet by way of the browser, which opened up the internet to everybody - soon it was just revolutionary.

My disenchantment? Oh no, my dear, there are no disenchantments, merely progressions and styles of possession. To exist is to be spellbound.

Some ways of naming a generation are fruitful and some are not. Postmodernism is not. It doesn't really say anything.

The narrative impulse is always with us; we couldn't imagine ourselves through a day without it.