I Write Because I Feel Driven To

Is There Anything More Useless Than A Crouton? I Sometimes Wake Up In The Small Hours With A Start And Realise That What's Roused Me Is An Overpowering Urge To Visit Violence On Its Originator.

In Truth, Even If They Have An Imperfect Insight Into Their Own Methods, I Still Slightly Mistrust Writers Of Fiction Who Are Assured Literary Critics; It Makes Me Suspect That They Favour The Word Over The World It Should Describe. Such Scribes Fall Victim Too Easily To The Solecism Of Equating Style With Morality.

The British And American Literary Worlds Operate In An Odd Kind Of Symbiosis: Our Critics Think Our Contemporary Novelists Are Not The Stuff Of Greatness Whereas Certain Contemporary Americans Indubitably Are. Their Critics Often Advance The Exact Opposite: British Fiction Is Cool, American Naff.

Television Is The Same As The Telephone, And The Same As The World Wide Web For That Matter. People Who Become Obsessed By The Peculiarities Of These Communications Media Have Simply Failed To Adjust To The Shock Of The Old. People Who Bleat On About The 'artistic' Potential Of Television Qua Television Are Equally Deluded.

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.