I prefer to write first drafts as soon as possible after waking, so that the oneiric inscape is still present to me..

The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement - if you can't deal with this, you needn't apply..

Just as the blurring between childhood and adulthood has produced the kidult, so the stretching of middle into old age has fostered another peculiar ….

The great liberty of the fictional writer is to let the imagination out of the traces and see it gallop off over the horizon..

Why is Mr Universe always from Earth?.

Whenever I produce my best work, it's always because I've spent time being idle. Something always emerges after nothing..

A creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism..

Schadenfreude is so nutritious..

So I was smacked up on the Prime Minister's jet – big deal..

In survey after survey, people report that the greatest dangers they face are, in this order: terrorist attack, plane crashes and nuclear accidents. ….

If the government announced that it was going to allocate a vast tranche of education funding purely to the pupils at the best public schools, there ….

I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to reveal a living form..

A very beautiful young woman once asked me to sign her breasts. That was back when I was a hip young thing - it's been all downhill since then..

Is there anything more useless than a crouton? I sometimes wake up in the small hours with a start and realise that what's roused me is an overpoweri….

Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can….

The cynics are correct the sense of freewill is only that feeling which we have when we take the necessitated option that most appeals to us..

I think I now understand why it is that the young are so very nostalgic. They have so little by way of personal history that they polish it up and ma….

I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer..

I'm an anarchist. I'm implacably opposed to heirarchical systems of power and control. I also mistrust crowds, as they often operate according to the….

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceeding day. This prevents those cr….

Things are only boring if you are boring..