The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement - if you can't deal with this, you needn't apply.

Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.

Mother sighed with exasperation. "Look, there aren't any "people in charge of death". When you die you move to another part of London, that's all there is to it. Period.

A party full of 'likeable' people doesn't bear contemplating.

If the seventies were bulbous, and the eighties sharp, the nineties were nothing but bogus.

I'm an anarchist. I'm implacably opposed to heirarchical systems of power and control. I also mistrust crowds, as they often operate according to their lowest common denominator. In terms of evolutionary psychology, the crowd is very close to a herd of stampeding wildebeest.

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