Fundamentalists believe that we don't believe in anything. In their view of the world, they are in possession of absolute certainties, while we are descending into decadence. We will be able to triumph over terrorism not by waging war on it, but through a conscious, fearless way of life.

Doris Lessing really doesn't care what the critics say. In fact, she orders her publishers not to send her the reviews and gets cross with them if they do because she doesn't want that in her head. She's going where she's going, and that's where she wants to go.

We all dream things into being; you imagine yourself having a child, and then you have a child. An inventor will think of something in his mind and then make it actual. So things are often passing from the imagined realm into the real world.

I make no complaint. I am a writer. I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it.

I have always thought, the secret purpose of the book tour is to make the writer hate the book he's written. And, as a result, drive him to write another book.

I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.

I'm no friend of Tony Blair's and I consider the Middle East policies of the United States and the UK fatal.