I always have lots of zany ideas for promotional stuff as publication nears.

- Nicholas Royle

I am interested in power and in the idea of one country exerting power over another. The Soviets took this to an extreme.

- Nicholas Royle

I've written over 100 short stories. You could say I'm obsessed with short stories.

- Nicholas Royle

What the short story needs above all is for one of the big publishers to get an equivalent series up and running and to support it and promote it.

- Nicholas Royle

Belgium is a country with a split personality.

- Nicholas Royle

I was interested in the ways that artists responded to totalitarianism - the Czech Jazz Section, Romanian absurdist theatre, Brecht's alienation effe…

- Nicholas Royle

The idea that a student can write a sonnet or a novel without having a sound understanding about its history, and where it fits into literature as a …

- Nicholas Royle

I was particularly drawn to Berlin because of its literal, concrete division. Two halves making a whole, or two entities that were altered doubles of…

- Nicholas Royle

I have no patience with up-themselves authors who complain about having to trail round a few bookshops signing stock.

- Nicholas Royle