It is a nonsense to me when people come along and tell me not to be pessimistic; or that culture has always been going to the bad. Well, yes, it has, and it is an author's job to point it out.

Of my old tendency to overdo the dedication and deface the title page with florid compliments and obscure quotes which the recipient cannot read, I will say only that I learnt my lesson when I had to shell out with my own money for a hardback I'd vandalised and now limit myself to 'Good wishes.'

Failing to see the point is not a virtue.

Don't imagine that a word you say is going to make a blind bit of difference.

Many a woman has suffered at the hands of a Paul Morel. There's more than one way of being brutal.

Do you want to be strangely various, or do you want to be purely yourself? Either way, revere no one.

I was a 'reverence for life' man - 'see life steadily and see it whole' - in my days as a lecturer in English lit. We are, I argued, if not exactly 'saved' by reading, at least partially 'repaired' by it: made the better morally and existentially.

Sensitivity doesn't necessarily make you easy to get on with.

I never believe any politician talking about popular culture.

The environment in which I studied was so safe, I thought I would die from the boredom of it.