Perhaps they were looking for passion; perhaps they delved into this book as into a mysterious parcel - a gift box at the bottom of which, hidden in layers of rustling tissue paper, lay something they'd always longed for but couldn't ever grasp.

And then she began to cry, and when I asked her why she was doing that, she said it was because I was to have a happy ending, and it was just like a book; and I wondered what books she'd been reading.

They told us to depend on memory, because nothing written down could be relied on. The Spirit travels from mouth to mouth, not from thing to thing: books could be burnt, paper crumbles away, computers could be destroyed. Only the spirit lives forever, and the Spirit isn't a thing.

That is how we writers all started: by reading. We heard the voice of a book speaking to us.

He's very in depth, on the dark side. He's interested in structure and how things work. After reading his books you can't just be a tourist in those places, only seeing the sunny side.