“Why do we fall silent or get worried just as our story is about to spring out of our control and into its own life? Whose shadow falls across the page?”

We are constantly telling ourselves what we most want to know, and at the same time are deaf to it. Why does envy have such a fierce bite?

The antidote to envy is one’s own work. Always one’s own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it. The answers you want can come only from the work itself.

Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing.

The only way [the book can be written] is to set the unbook-the gilt-framed portrait of the book-right there on the altar and sacrifice it, truly sacrifice it.

Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely.

Fiction must convince our bodies for it to have any chance of convincing our minds.

From the coffee bars of Camden to the gin joints of Norfolk – across Britain, a revolution is brewing. And no, it’s not John McDonnell’s bitter socialist hooch. It’s a generation growing up with an entirely different view of the world – free thinking, optimistic and hungry for success.

Political correctness has a stranglehold on academia, on feminism, and on the media. It is a form of both madness and maggotry, and has already silenced the voices of writers like James Dicky across the land.

Free-flow play is not compulsory, but there is a belief across lots of nurseries that it is.

Leaving the European Union really does give us a chance as a country to become more outward-looking, to become more competitive, and to deepen our links with our partners right across the world.

I have smuggled so many ingredients across so many borders, like shallot confit from Thailand, or a new sauce from New Orleans not approved by the FDA.

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

There are two kinds of comics; there are the ones who build bridges, and then there are the people who walk across the bridges as though they built them. The bridge builders are few and far between.