[Pride and power] are the same except that pride leaves the lights on and power can do it in the dark.

We're also far enough from the publishing power that we have no access to the politics of publishing, although there are interpersonal politics, of course.

The second is the structure and source of cults. They have always haunted me, and I wanted to explore the fundamental notion of giving up responsibility to an outside power.

There should be unemployment insurance for fictional people.

There are those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behaviour and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentricities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity.

My own theory about the phlegmatic qualities and properties of the English is the mountain of pure white sugar hydrocarbons they consume every day bloody day of the year - the stiff upper lip is petrified sugar; that's Bermuda's revenge, the with death, the rotting future square in the teeth of it.