It could be argued that every age gets the comfort savagery writer it deserves.

Always carry a notebook. And I mean always.

Sometimes, when I hear people without experience of addiction blame addicts for their behaviour I feel like saying to them: "You simply don't understand - how can a child be held responsible for doing such a dreadful thing to himself?" But then again, at other times I have to acknowledge: it was done wilfully.

I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer.

A creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism.

A short story is a shard, a sliver, a vignette. It's a biopsy on the human condition but it doesn't have this capacity to think autonomously for itself.

I write as someone who has no more time for repressive Islam than he does for repressive Christianity or Judaism, but at least look at the face in the hijab - and try to imagine the one beneath the niqab - before you depersonalise its wearer.