Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

I have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea.

Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it.

Life is a helluva thing. You can see trouble coming and you can't do a damn thing to prevent it coming. You just got to sit and watch and wait.

It is important not to trust people too much.

I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.

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