What I'm above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality. If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that's it really: I'….

To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy..

It [Cambridge] wasn't a holy grail in the sense that I'd never been to Cambridge. But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very….

That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water..

I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life..

God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, "Can I be excused the Crucifixion?" No!.

If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way..

If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means..

Deluded liberal that I am, I persist in thinking that those with a streak of sexual unorthodoxy ought to be more tolerant of their fellows than those….

One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty..

Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?.

Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds..

I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I'm homosexual. In the way of circumstances and background to trans….

...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had b….

Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching..

An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left, Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should ….

It's the one species I wouldn't mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth. I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti….

Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don't try and mean it. Nor prayers. The liturgy is best treated and read as if it's som….

A book is a device to ignite the imagination..

[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and pe….

We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules..