“Plus it’s not a purse, it’s called a satchel. Indiana Jones wears one.”

You must not complain, then, if she goes hunting.

Possessive parents rarely live long enough to see the fruits of their selfishness.

Everything I have ever written has been in the same chair, in the same room.

Ive learned never to try and force words to come.

… I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of “writer’s block”.

It isn’t like that at all. It may be more difficult now, and take longer than when I started to write, but there’s a great, empty warehouse out there looking for simple talent.

My great-grandfather was a self-taught man, and his library was extraordinary. I read the lot.

My attitude is that if anybody of any age wants to read a book, let them, but I do think that no child would want to read Boneland.

At this level, only images connect. And here, story becomes symbol; symbol is myth. And myth is truth.

It’s where I keep all my things. Get a lot of compliments on this.

Hitting the gym to release stress is not nearly as effective as hitting the people that cause the stress to begin with.

If you are going to write, nothing will stop you, and if you are not going to write, nothing will make you.

I love research so much that I do an enormous amount; it helps put off the moment of starting to write the story.

Oral traditions going back a long, long time, which I inherited by osmosis.

I learnt that I must never finish a book with nothing else to do.

I’ll buy metaphor, but simile’s a cop-out used by scaredycats who won’t commit to anything. Simile’s for cowards.

On one hand, I think it’s very important to talk about race and talk about gender, because if it’s not talked about, then we won’t progress.

Yes. A man will talk about how he’d like to escape from living folks. But it’s the dead folks that do him the damage. It’s the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and dont try to hold him, that he cant escape from.

I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or rat in a trap.

I don’t remember the specific ones she used, but I remember the bottles.

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

Mainstream people dislike homosexuality because they can’t help concentrating on what homosexual men do to one another. And when you contemplate what people do, you think of yourself doing it. And they don’t like that. That’s the famous joke:

One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure.

I hate rodents. I mean, the House of Commons is completely infested. I will stand on a chair if I see one of the things.