We live in a cluttered culture, a culture of information in which even our computers can't tell us what's worth knowing and what is merely cultural scrap. In such a society, we don't have the experience of contemplative space, of the time or mood to engage a book of poetry or even read a novel. Who can achieve the unconscious-conscious state of the reader when everything is stimulation, everything is movement and information?

Basically for me a story can be anything. Anything you tell me, anything I read in the newspaper, in any mode. I don't have any restrictions.

The professorial dictum has always been to write what you know, but I say write what you don't know and find something out. And it works.

The very genetic determinism I posited in World's End as a way of shaking off my inherited demons is being proven in fact as we map out the human genome.

When you're in the midst of writing, it's a beautiful thing happening through you. Many people have said that it's not you, it's the soul of humankind and so on, I don't know. But it has the same effect [as music]. It takes you out of your body and out of this planet.

I'm a product of state schools. I had a working-class family. We had no books. I was the first to go to college. But I didn't really think about it, or about making money. I was just going to be an artist, and I've been fortunate. I've never had to work for anybody nor have I had to write for money. Maybe that's another reason that I've been able to be productive. I haven't had to use my writing to make a living.

Criticism can be wonderful, especially in making connections in an interpretive way. But by applying theories randomly, it's an interesting exercise, but I don't think it illuminates the literature.