Photos represent primarily a seductive but deleterious short cut.

This sort of encouragement is vital for any writer. And lastly the publication of Touching the Flame, which was on hold for two years and went through a few publishers before finding a stable home.

I don't know anyone who actually likes the dark or night-time. I don't care how much they say it doesn't bother them. That's why we used to huddle in caves and light fires when the sun went down.

Having said that, I'm a huge Jack Nicholson fan because he just goes nuts in everything he does. Having Jack in his heyday would also be a dream come true.

Sometimes I'll hear a phrase or a word and write it down in my little black notebook (a writer's best mate), then come back to it and work a plot around it.

The joy of painting lies precisely in the challenge of memory and the challenge of translation from the lived experience to the two-dimensional or three-dimensional symbol.

Painting is a matter of finding the right balance between consoling and reassuring the eye and challenging and disturbing the eye.

The face of totalitarianism turned out to be a mask - obviously - but the face of Capitalism has no face at all.

Considering the amount of work I put into each piece, the amount I need to make from it is pretty high. I won't sell for less... but that means I rarely sell.

Writing can be a very solitary business. It's you sat at a desk typing words into a computer. It can get lonely sometimes and lots of writers live quite isolated lives.

I believe that, like most writers, my personality comes through in the fiction. So in that respect my writing can’t be like any other author’s really.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

Any man can make mistakes but only an idiot persists in his error.

Be more dedicated to making solid achievements than in running after swift but synthetic happiness.

What it was at the time was literally a plea for, to get the pressure off for a while, to give her space to breathe. She was very unhappy. She was feeling pretty claustrophobic.

West Ham play a speficic type of game - football.

A miracle drug is any drug that will do what the label says it will do.

If you eat food or produce, you should take into account where that food comes from.

Like a historian, I interpret, select, discard, shape, simplify. Unlike a historian, I make up people's thoughts.

Gold was not altogether certain what, anatomically, a gorge was, but he knew that his was rising.

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger.