Always Carry A Notebook. And I Mean

I Think It's A Misreading Of Dostoevsky To Think Of Him As A Programmatic Theist. He's Actually Much Closer To Someone Like William James. He's Actually A Pragmatist.

I Write As Someone Who Has No More Time For Repressive Islam Than He Does For Repressive Christianity Or Judaism, But At Least Look At The Face In The Hijab - And Try To Imagine The One Beneath The Niqab - Before You Depersonalise Its Wearer.

The High Arts Of Literature And Music Stand In A Curious Relationship To One Another, At Once Securely Comfortable And Deeply Uneasy - Rather Like A Long-term Marriage.

The Marvellous Thing About Writing, Whether It Be Fiction Or Journalism, Is That It Is Simultaneously The Most Intimate And The Most Anonymous Of Meetings Between People. It Is Profoundly Intimate In Reaching Into The Psyche Of Another, At The Same Time As Being Devoid Of Social Characteristics, Cultural Characteristics, Economic Characteristics.

If The Seventies Were Bulbous, And The Eighties Sharp, The Nineties Were Nothing But Bogus.