What a weird thing smoking is and I can't stop it. I feel cosy, have a sense of well-being when I'm smoking, poisoning myself, killing myself slowly. Not so slowly maybe. I have all kinds of pains I don't want to know about and I know that's what they're from. But when I don't smoke I scarcely feel as if I'm living. I don't feel as if I'm living unless I'm killing myself.

When I write a book, I don't have a plan or an outline. The characters move the action, and the action develops the characters. When I write a book, I become an actor, really, taking the role of the person who is speaking or acting at the time, and so their reactions to whatever they see are my reactions.

Is there an existence that is only mine?

After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?

There must be a lot of people in the world being wondered about by people who don't see them anymore.

I'll never retire. They'll have to take my computer out of my cold, dead hands. I'm addicted to writing. I feel physically unwell if I'm not doing it.

The Zoo is a prison for animals who have been sentenced without trial and I feel guilty because I do nothing about it. But there it was, I wanted to see an oyster-catcher and I was no better than the people who'd caged oyster-catchers for me to see.