You are safe with me." "I am not at all safe, with you. But I have no desire to be elsewhere.

I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.

What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.

Things are not what they seem.

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.

He felt changed, but there was no one to tell.

Obedience is the fruit of faith.

The centre of the tragedy, therefore, may be said with equal truth to lie in action issuing from character, or in character issuing in action.

Many of my books are written from a female perspective. I rather enjoy the take that women have on the world, and certainly I enjoy the conversations that women have.

I believe the nearest I've come to perfect love was with a young coal-miner when I was about 16.

Sometimes I think too much fuss is made about marriage. Century after century of carnal embracement and we're still no nearer to understanding one another.

So much as I enjoy big novels of epic sweep, I often find, say, if they follow several generations, by the third generation, I'm not caring about the people anymore.

Mysticism cuts through bullshit, and it takes you right there to the experience. Everything in your life is eventually set up as a pragmatic energy flow into the light.

What law enforcement agencies and insurers do not understand is that driving while high is actually a safe activity.

Most of us are referees at heart; we like to call throws and errors on someone else.

You will never see players from City surround the referee.