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

The thing that I was brought up to prize above everything else is the intellect. There is no problem that the intellect cannot solve, but it never had an original thought. Originality is the realm of the unconscious.

My feeling is that writing is, for me, a pathological condition. That could sound like a mystical experience, and it may be a mystical experience, but I have learnt just to go with it.

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

I've learned never to try and force words to come.

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.'