I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to reveal a living form.

Ideologists of all kinds find a strange sort of comfort in the madness of the crowd; it confirms them in their suspicion that history, far from being made by the great mass of individuals - as Marx averred - is rather unmade by a single massive individual, a collective Other, who stands in stark contrast to you and he.

Always carry a notebook. And I mean always.

The marvellous thing about writing, whether it be fiction or journalism, is that it is simultaneously the most intimate and the most anonymous of meetings between people. It is profoundly intimate in reaching into the psyche of another, at the same time as being devoid of social characteristics, cultural characteristics, economic characteristics.

You may have gathered that I am not the most cheerful of revellers - some characterise me as the death and soullessness of any party but it wasn't always so, believe me.

Without a shadow of doubt, Trafalgar Square has to be one of the most crap urban public spaces in the world.

Whenever I produce my best work, it's always because I've spent time being idle. Something always emerges after nothing.