On the strength of Vonnegut's reputation, 'Breakfast of Champions' spent a year on the best-seller lists, proving that he could indeed publish anything and make money.

There is more to be pondered in the grain and texture of life than traditional fiction allows. The work of essayists is vital precisely because it permits and encourages self-knowledge in a way that is less indirect than fiction, more open and speculative.

All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one.

If literary terms were about artistic merit and not the rules of convenience, about achievement and not safety, the term 'realism' would be an honorary one, conferred only on work that actually builds unsentimental reality on the page, that matches the complexity of life with an equally rich arrangement in language.

I grew up reading 19th-century novels and late Victorian children's books, so I try for a good story full of coincidence and error, landscape and weather. However, the world was radically changed during my lifetime, and I tell of that battering as best I can.

I wanted to be an endurance athlete from a young age. I remember being in a careers class at school and saying I wanted to be a professional athlete and the teacher replying, 'You're not going to make it; it's not possible.'

I don't drive smart cars; I don't go on fancy holidays. All my money has gone on my kids' education.

I have decided not to give interviews and not to hold conversations with journalists who deal with the political activity of my wife rather than my activity as university teacher and researcher.