If faces were different when lit from above or below -- what was a face? What was anything?

I'm not a critic so much of my own writing. People must make up their own minds over that.

I don't think they [contemporary writers] read me either. I mean, if we're concerned genuinely with writing, I think we probably get on with our work.

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.

Of the authors writing in English, I'd mention Shakespeare and Milton. But all this is terribly high-hat and makes me sound very po-faced, I'm afraid; however, I just happen to like these enormous, swinging, great creatures.

Life's scientific, but we don't know, do we? Not certainly, I mean.

Malcolm Bradbury made the point, and I don't know whether it's a valid one or not, that the real English at the moment is not the English spoken in England or in America or even in Canada or Australia or New Zealand. The real English is the English which is a second language, so that it's rather like Latin in the days of the Roman Empire when people had their own languages, but had Latin in order to communicate.