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

I feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others.

The past has to be seen to be dead; or the past will kill.

I always knew who I was and where I had come from. I was not looking for a home in other people's lands.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

The writer is all alone.

Some writers can only deal with childhood experience, because it's complete. For another kind of writer, life goes on, and he's able to keep processing that as well.