Is that a good definition of marking the ageing watershed? That moment when you realize - quite rationally, quite unemotionally - that the world in the not-so-distant future will not contain you: that the trees you planted will continue growing but you will not be there to see them.

I let people off the hook too easily.

We never love anyone. Not really. We only love our idea of another person. It is some conception of our own that we love. We love ourselves, in fact.

There's a sense in all my novels that nothing is certain.

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

Sometimes limbo is a tolerable place to be stuck.

In the broad spectrum of the arts, two worlds rarely overlap - the literary world and the world of rock music.