My grief is that the publishing world, the book writing world is an extraordinary shoddy, dirty, dingy world.

I will say I am the sum of my books.

His ignorance seemed to widen with everything he read.

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

The ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.

As a child I knew almost nothing, nothing beyond what I had picked up in my grandmother's house. All children, I suppose, come into the world like that, not knowing who they are.