The thing is - fear can't hurt you any more than a dream.

Honestly, I haven't the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.

As soon as Oliver Twist is serialized, people who would never dream of reading [Charles] Dickens, if they hadn't seen him on their box, buy the paperback.

I do like people to read the books twice, because I write my novels about ideas which concern me deeply and I think are important, and therefore I want people to take them seriously. And to read it twice of course is taking it seriously.

And I've been wearing specs since I was three.

Couldn't a fire outrun a galloping horse?

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against this as a method, but it is not what English writers do.