I don't feel when I'm writing that I'm drawing from any other writer, but of course I must be. The writers I've admired have been not so very different from myself: Evelyn Waugh, for example, that kind of crystalline prose. And I've always admired W. Somerset Maugham more than any other writer.

The simple Wordsworth . . . / Who, both by precept and example, shows / That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose.

As a child, I was more afraid of tetanus shots than, for example, Dracula.

Natural objects, for example, must be experienced before any theorizing about them can occur.

My history of singing has always probably been closer to a David Bowie approach than, for example, an AC/DC approach.

Writing has taught me a lot - though far from everything - about writing, so as time has passed, it has become more pleasurable if not easier. I've done other things in life, but writing is by a factor of 10 the most difficult among them. And, of course, you never achieve what you set out to achieve, so you must keep on trying to do better.