A novel, I think, is partly about the contemporary and partly about the eternal, and it's the balance of that that's difficult to achieve.

I don't think I've ever quite grown out of it, actually. There was a point where I could recite some of those Elvish verses - which I've mercifully forgotten. But I can still, if really pushed, recite the text of the inside of the ruling ring in the language of Mordor.

Certainly, poverty and economic decline have a lot to do with the so-called rage of Islam. You've got all these young men in countries which are economically in bad shape. The idea that they might be able to make a good living and get married and have a family, a decent life, seems very remote to a lot of people in a lot of the world.

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

I think that England made a very big, historical mistake to allow itself to become the kind of terrorist capital of the world.

YouTube is full of pieces of trash. If you want to look on YouTube and find something that insults you, you can probably find it.

Sometimes we feel we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.