Poetry died as a commercial form and then it died as a serious art form. No one serious touches it. It used to be that somebody like F. Scott Fitzgerald could make a high middle-class income from working as a short story writer for the Saturday Evening Post and other outlets. That doesn't happen anymore. It used to be that a legitimate playwright could make a living on Broadway from writing decent plays.

I write drama in the English language. If I wasn't working in London I'd be doing something wrong.

There were days when you would get the TV listings from The Globe and The Herald. Video was out, but nobody could afford it...expect for my uncle George, who was a second father to me, and had every film in the world, and every book.

I was particularly anxious that I shoot the tires out of the class system. All it is these days is a hobby of certain masochists, and certain sadists.

The novel may be dead as a commercial form. When art forms things die as commercial forms, something happens to the practice of those arts that isn't very pleasant. It used to be that a poet like Tennyson could keep his house and his coach-and-four and his staff of six servants on the income from poetry. That doesn't happen anymore.

Most films go out like skydivers who have had their chutes packed by a committee of blind schizophrenics.

It wasn't just British gangster films that really did for me as a kid, personally, it was British films in general.