I have, I must admit, despised the English countryside for much of my life - despised it and avoided it for its want of danger and adventure.

I have in the past acquired a reputation for concocting non-existent writers and unwritten volumes.

Retiring from writing is to avoid the inevitable bitterness which a writing career is bound to deliver as its end product in almost every case.

I was brought up in a flat in North London - virtually the last building in London, because north of us was countryside all the way to the coast, and south of us was non-stop London for 20 miles.

Life and death are matters of the God. I can be killed even at home.

I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.

Death is very mysterious to us. One moment someone is there with us, and the next moment they're not.

Only a humanity to whom death has become as indifferent as its members, that has itself died, can inflict it administratively on innumerable people.