There is certainly a satisfaction and dignity to be gained in coming to terms with the mistakes one has made in the course of one’s life.

He chose a certain path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at least. As for myself, I cannot even clai….

I want my words to survive translation. I know when I write a book now I will have to go and spend three days being intensely interrogated by journal….

For a great many people, the evening is the most enjoyable part of the day. Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looki….

The English landscape at its finest - such as I saw this morning - possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more superficial….

I had been plunged into a different world. I found myself spending half my time answering weird questions on book tours in the Midwest. People would ….

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.….

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….

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….

People were incredibly kind to our family and went out of their way to help..

Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determin….

Its was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one's development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one's ability and beyon….

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 ….

People aren't quite sure what it means when a book is a Booker Prize winner. They're not quite sure what is being recommended, what literary values i….

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….

I actually dislike, more than many people, working through literary allusion. I just feel that there's something a bit snobbish or elitist about that….

I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?.

I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographi….

One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event..

I half closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in ….

So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy.