It’s a shame, sort of a waste, that most people are influenced by what the newspaper supplements tell them is the book they are meant to be seen reading this year. It seems like those people aren’t really interested in books. If you’re really into books, you havoc all over the place picking up disparate stuff which you devour hungrily, and the ‘selection’ process is more like a sixth sense hunger, a billion miles away from fashion.

A society will manufacture an image of progress and locate it in the direction it wishes to take us.

Ideas are self-replenishing, like snot

How many times does a man have to shave before his chin gets the message?

Most books are so well written they barely have any effect on the reader's senses

In America, fundamentalist Christians believe the world was created 6,000 years ago - in England people drink in bars that are older than that.

Since childhood I’d been suspected of imagination