For a small island, the place is remarkably diverse. Writers tend to see things from their own points of view, looking in one direction very much.

I wouldn't have thought that the techniques of story-telling, which is what the novel is after all, can vary much because there are two things involved.There's a story and there's a listener, whose attention you have to keep. Now the only way in which you can keep a reader's attention to a story is in his wanting to know what is going to happen next. This puts a fairly close restriction on the method you must use.

One's intelligence may march about and about a problem, but the solution does not come gradually into view. One moment it is not. The next it is there.

There is, they say, no fool like an old fool.

One thing should be put firmly. Where people have commented on that novel [The Paper Men], they generally criticize the poor academic, Rick L. Tucker, who is savaged by the author, Wilfred Barclay. I don't think people have noticed that I have been far ruder about Barclay than I have been about Tucker. Tucker is a fool, but Barclay is a swine. The author really gets his come-uppance.

For a small island [Great Britain], the place is remarkably diverse.

Heaven lies around us in our infancy.