It is one of the enjoyments of retirement that you are able to drift through the day at your own pace, easy in the knowledge that you have put hard w….

It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed..

I felt slightly superior to student politics, for instance. I had no reason to think this, but I thought of myself as slightly more seasoned. I becam….

All you decent, well-meaning gentlemen, let me ask you, have you any idea what sort of place the world is becoming all around you? The days when you ….

I have the feeling of this completely alternative person I should have become. There was another life that I might have had, but I’m having this one..

What is pertinent is the calmness of beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, its own greatness, and feels n….

As with a wound on one's own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things.

I've always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers..

Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it's a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust..

I quizzed him a lot on this point and i suspect the truth was that it was like a lot of things at that age: you don't have any clear reason, you just….

Love isn't about when you first meet. It's about the many, many years you spend together, when you're trying to keep that flame burning..

I took one glance at her in that hospital bed under the dull light and recognised the look on her face, which I'd seen on donors often enough before.….

It never occurred to me that our lives, until then so closely interwoven, could unravel and separate over a thing like that. But the fact was, I supp….

My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and ….

There comes a point when you can more or less count the number of books you're going to write before you die..

I don't have a deep link with England like, say, Jonathan Coe or Hanif Kureishi might demonstrate. For me it is like a mythical place..

Now naturally, like many of us, I have a reluctance to change too much of the old ways..

I think it's quite difficult to understand what kind of life a writer leads. They might be millionaires, or they might be starving people..

When I see films made from books, I make a huge effort not to remember the book. It's important to see the film as a film..

Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking..

There's still a part of me that thinks I have to write a really good novel. I'm not trying to say I'm not happy with the novels I've written in the p….