Dignity was the first quality to be abandoned when the heart took over the running of human affairs.

My novels are often about people who are in love or attracted to each other.

When it's mutual, a man and a woman know, instinctively, wordlessly. They may do nothing about it, but the knowledge of that shared desire is out there in the world - as obvious as neon, saying: I want you, I want you, I want you.

The only times we are consciously aware of the authorship of a photograph, I would argue, are when we contemplate the photographs we ourselves have taken (or those of friends and family) or when we go deliberately to the photographers monograph or exhibition. The signed image - the appropriated, the owned image - is by far the rarest in this pullulating world of pictures.

Sometimes limbo is a tolerable place to be stuck.

We all possess, like it or not, the people we know, and are possessed by them in turn.

I tend to admire dead people more than the living. All too often, human reality diminishes the glowing reputation.