The Writing Life Is Essentially One Of

Some People Have Human Muses - Mine Is A City. I Feel A Startling Ambivalence Towards London, But For Better Or Worse My Work Has Come Utterly To Depend Upon It.

Because I Was A Young Man So, Of Course, I Did Get Into Fights. The Last Time I Actually Was In A Fight, In The Sense Of Throwing Punches Myself, Was Probably When I Was At College, Not Since 1980. But I Remember Being Attacked Quite A Few Times In The '80s.

The High Arts Of Literature And Music Stand In A Curious Relationship To One Another, At Once Securely Comfortable And Deeply Uneasy - Rather Like A Long-term Marriage.

My Novels Tend To Come About From A Fusion Of Two Big Ideas, Creating A Critical Mass That Then Fissions, Throwing Off Hundreds Of Other Particles, Riffs, Tropes And Characters.

I Have A Healthy Appetite For Solitude. If You Don't, You Have No Business Being A Writer.