Hyperrealism can create an atmosphere of surrealism because nobody sees the world in such detail.

It's true that the human body is more vulnerable than the products of the human mind.

We have seen many other not just writers and intellectuals, but including writers and intellectuals in the Muslim world being attacked and murdered by Islamic fanatics, accused of exactly the same things that I was, these medieval crimes of apostasy And heresy, but then broadening from that into a broader attack on all of us.

This strange business of what it is to be a writer is this increasingly insane world in which we live, in which surrealism, it seems, is the new realism.

My friend Lou Reed came to the end of his song. So very sad.But hey, Lou, you'll always take a walk on the wild side. Always a perfect day.

The USA approach looks like bullying because it is.

One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.