Politics Is The Enemy Of The Imagination.

I'm Delighted When People Respond With Passion And Readily Intensity To My Work. Literature Is Not As The Economist Would Put It A Positional Good; In Other Words, There Is Infinite Space For Good Literature.

It's Good To Get Your Hands Dirty A Bit And To Test How You See Things At A Given Point. And It's Very Pleasing After Writing Something Like 'atonement' Or 'on Chesil Beach,' Which Are Historical, To Get Involved In Some Plausible Re-enactment Of The Here And Now.

She Bent Her Finger And Then Straightened It. The Mystery Was In The Instant Before It Moved, The Dividing Moment Between Not Moving And Moving, When Her Intention Took Effect. It Was Like A Wave Breaking. If She Could Only Find Herself At The Crest, She Thought, She Might Find The Secret Of Herself, That Part Of Her That Was Really In Charge. She Brought Her Forefinger Closer To Her Face And Stared At It, Urging It To Move. It Remained Still Because She Was Pretending... . And When She Did Crook It Finally, The Action Seemed To Start In The Finger Itself, Not In Some Part Of Her Mind.

The Cost Of Oblivious Daydreaming Was Always This Moment Of Return, The Realignment With What Had Been Before And Now Seemed A Little Worse.

Daylight Seemed Then To Be The Physical Manifestation Of Common Sense.