I'm many things, most of 'em bad. But a man of political principles? No.
I don't read reviews any more, but I'm told by my publisher who gives me an account of what people have been writing and it's been a very split kind of response.
I've been trying to fit everything in, trying to get to the end before it's too late, but I see now how badly I've deceived myself. Words do not allow such things. The closer you come to the end, the more there is to say. The end is only imaginary, a destination you invent to keep yourself going, but a point comes when you realize you will never get there. You might have to stop, but that is only because you have run out of time. You stop, but that does not mean you have come to an end.
The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all. I can't describe how deeply I love them all.
We exist for ourselves, perhaps, and at times we even have a glimmer of who we are, but in the end we can never be sure, and as our lives go on, we become more and more opaque to ourselves, more and more aware of our own incoherence. No one can cross the boundary into another – for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself.
The story is not in the words; it's in the struggle.
When I start, I have a feeling for the characters, and maybe the shape of the story. Sometimes I might even have the last sentence in mind. But, no book I've ever written has ever ended the way I thought it would. Characters disappear, others come forward. Once you start writing, everything changes.
Hate does not present many choices; if hate is your solution, you are fairly certain to hate all phemonena with equal joy and intensity, without troubling to drag into prominence any one feature from the loathsome whole.
Ten silver saxes, a bass with a bow The drummer relaxes and waits between shows For his cinnamon girl.
I was a big rugby player and into my motocross, so I lost loads of weight and a rumor went around the town that I had picked up a drug addiction!
I'm not working-class: I come from the criminal classes.