I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.

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.

Ignite the boldest of your dreams!

Meg and Belch only had eyes for each other. Not in the usual romantic sense.

I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.

For me, writing something in the spirit of Halloween is like Mother Teresa writing on charity and sacrifice. It's just second nature to me.

Growing old gracefully used to begin at about 35, but today women prefer to 'stay young gratefully' with thanks to designers, beauticians and plastic surgeons.

If I have any 'message' worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.

Statistics are no substitute for judgment.

I think that live music is something that the Internet can never kill.

I love silent cinema but don't hold it sacred. Like any branch of film there are some very boring films alongside the masterpieces.

Authenticity is what I've always gone after in my work, and I understand what feels emotionally right, instinctively. Working with actors has just come with experience.