I'm A Novelist, Not A Social Scientist

Society In The English Countryside Is Still Strangely, Quaintly Divided. If Black Comedy And A Certain Type Of Social Commentary Are What You Want, I Think English Rural Communities Offer Quite A Lot Of Material.

There Is A Slovenly Disrespect For Truth And Reality That Has Infected And Cross-infected The Arts; The Values Of Entertainment Are Relentlessly In The Ascendant, To The Extent That It Becomes Virtually Impossible To Write A Naturalistic Fictional Sentence Without Feeling That The Fabric Of That Sentence Is Already Compromised.

People Are Least Aware Of Others When Demonstrating Their Own Power Over Them.

Every Time I Write A Book, I've Probably Taken Five Years Off My Life.

Hope Is One Of Those No-win-no-fee Things, And Although It Needs Some Encouragement To Survive, Its Existence Doesn't Necessarily Prove Anything.