Where I Went, No One Could Follow.

With The Crime Novels, Its Delightful To Have Protagonists I Can Revisit In Book After Book. Its Like Having A Fictitious Family.

I Have This Fantasy. I'm Walking Past A Bookshop And I Click My Fingers And All My Books Go Blank. So I Can Start Again And Get It Right.

All I Wanted Was To Be Left Alone. They Abhor A Vacuum, Other People. You Find A Quiet Corner Where You Can Hunker Down In Peace, And The Next Minute There They Are, Crowding Around You In Their Party Hats, Tooting Their Paper Whistles In Your Face And Insisting You Get Up And Join In The Knees-up.

Poetry Is That Magic Which Consists In Awakening Sensations With The Help Of A Combination Of Sounds ... That Sorcery By Which Ideas Are Necessarily Communicated To Us, In A Definite Way, By Words Which Nevertheless Do Not Express Them.

The Effect Of Prizes On One's Career - If That Is What To Call It - Is Considerable, Since They Give One More Clout With Publishers And More Notoriety Among Journalists. The Effect On One's Writing, However, Is Nil - Otherwise, One Would Be In Deep Trouble.