“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.”

I was more inclined to think of it as “writer’s impatience”, and to follow Arthur Koestler’s dictum: “Soak; and wait.

When you start, the world of publishing seems like a great cathedral citadel of talent, resisting attempts to let you inside.

She wants to be flowers, but you make her owls.

I wish Monkeys could Skype. Maybe one day.

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.

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.

No-one wants to see anybody fail in life.

I really take my hat off to anybody that steps in the ring because it’s so hard – you’re competing against your friends, and you’re working in front of an audience who tells you exactly what they’re thinking.

Thus, anybody who follows this nature and gives way its states will be led into quarrels and conflicts, and go against the conventions and rules of society, and will end up a criminal.

The riches of the rich are not the cause of the poverty of anybody; the process that makes some people rich is, on the contrary, the corollary of the process that improves many peoples want satisfaction.

I’m eighteen years behind in my ironing.

To be desired is perhaps the closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal.

I don’t listen to what art critics say. I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.

Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts.