When I was 21 I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for The Simpsons who'd briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.

'A reality shaped around your own desires' - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.

When I see my friends engaging in a Twitter war for an afternoon, I think that would destroy me for a month.

Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer.

It's gotten to a point where everybody is concerned about their rights and nobody is concerned about their duties.

For me, [deep structures] might be something very simply to do with the split in my family. That's why I'm always thinking about opposites. It's so childish, really, but that might be simply what it is.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.