I Always Hated Tony Blair, From The

When I Was Starting Out, Science Fiction Was A Little Genre Over There, Which Only A Few People Read. But Now -- Where Are You Going To Put, For Example, Salman Rushdie? Or Any Of The South American Writers? Most People Get By Calling Them Magical Realists.

I Think Novelists Perform Many Useful Tasks For Their Fellow Citizens, But One Of The Most Valuable Is This: To Enable Us To See Ourselves As Others See Us.

Always, In Epochs When The Languages And Dialects Of A Culture Have Become Outstripped By Development Of A Practical Sort, These Languages Become Repetitive, Formalised -- And Ridiculous. Phrases, Words, Associations Of Sentences Spin Themselves Out Automatically, But Have No Effect: They Have Lost Their Power, Their Energy.

I Would Not Be At All Surprised To Find Out . . . That The Dimensions Of Buildings Affect Us In Ways We Don't Guess.

I Was Filled With Such A Dangerous Delicious Intoxication That I Could Have Walked Straight Off The Steps Into The Air, Climbing On The Strength Of My Own Drunkeness Into The Stars. And The Intoxication, As I Knew Even Then, Was The Recklessness Of Infinite Possibility.