As suburbs go, Bromley's not bad. But as David Bowie and Hanif Kureishi have observed, you do want to get out of there quickly.

I always consider every place worth exploring once- just in case there's a thirty foot flaming sign divulging the secret of life, that no one has told me about.

The greatest danger of being gifted, is that you may never learn how to make an effort.

I went to a British Council event a while back and there were lots of German professors of literature. About half of them were convinced I had a German sense of humour and the other half were sure it was British. They are probably still arguing about it now.

I don't take much notice of reviews now - obviously you'd like to have straight worship but you're never going to get that.

One of my proudest achievements is that when an authoritative book about Hungarian literature came out about a decade ago, there was a little article about me which said I was a Hungarian writer but pretending not to be. Bearing in mind I can hardly write a cheque in Hungarian, I was delighted to be included in the pantheon of Hungarian writers.

Even those with unspendable fortunes only have one mind, one mouth, two ears, two eyes and one pleasure station. There's only so much fun you can take.