If you took away everything in the world that had to be invented, there'd be nothing left except a lot of people getting rained on.

I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.

I'm not one of those writers who insist they don't read reviews and don't care much about them. I do read them, and I do care about them, and they're not always what you want them to be in an ideal world.

The idea that being human and having rights are equivalent - that rights are inherent - is unintelligible in a Darwinian world.

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

When I was younger, I could do something useful just by being free for half a day, but now I need five days to get the world I've left out of my head and ten days or a fortnight not talking to anyone to hold what I need to hold inside my head.