If I were dead, then nobody in England would have to fuss about the cost of my security and whether or not I merited such special treatment for so long.

If somebody's trying to shut you up, sing louder, and if possible, better.

You can't assume if you do something contentious that people will be on your side. The moment violence enters the story, the story changes. Then the question is, "How do you face up to violence?" And then you have to have a no-compromise position. And this is quite simply a lesson we learn in the school playground.

I'm a novelist. Fortunately I don't have to rule the world.

I want to write novels. I want to write stories. I want to do the stuff that I became a writer to do.

The world is about the way in which our dreams intersect with our real life. Endlessly, the world of the imagination changes the world.

It's difficult not to color our perception of author's product with his personality. There are so many examples of this. What do we think of Ezra Pound - clearly a great poet and clearly kind of an asshole? You can say the same thing about Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who clearly was a Nazi sympathizer, and yet one of the great writers of the 20th century. It is tough, but there are enough examples around where we have to somehow find a way of separating the work from the artist and seeing what there is to see in the work, while also condemning the thoughts we see in the man.