Nowadays, my mood ungoverned, I'm free to think the most outrageous things, such as: might it not be a good idea to insist that drug companies give their preparations names that tell the user what they really do?

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

I enjoy doing very high mileages, partly out of masochism and also because I like to feel the shape of the landscape.

People tend to think of their lives as having a dramatic arc, because they read too much fiction.

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

You don't need to know this - but here goes: due to some acquired infantilism, I feel compelled to fall asleep listening to the radio. On a good night, I'll push the frail barque of my psyche off into the waters of Lethe accompanied by the midnight newsreader - on a bad one, it's the shipping forecast.

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