More people now work in the arts than the steel, coal and car industries combined.

History is too often the refuge of the tidy-minded, making neat patterns when the dust has settled.

There's nothing the British like better than a bloke who comes from nowhere, makes it, and then gets clobbered.

To hear the Treorchy Male Choir in full throat is one of the great joys of choral music.

Writing novels is a way of living alternative lives.

Occasionally now I feel a wang that goes in my head - once you've got it you've got it. The [illness] was quite severe, leaving me deeply unhappy and frightened.

When anybody tells you something about writing, somebody will tell you something completely different and they will also be right

Is it rather stupid and dangerous to take Magna Carta so much for granted, as many of us seem to do, and to think of this attitude as 'very English?'

I'm not a fan of the working class being mocked, including by some of our famous writers - even those who came from it.

The arts stimulate imagination. They provoke thought. And then, having done that, all sorts of other things happen.

Dame Barbara Cartland was an endearing eccentric, and when I interviewed her, she wanted me to listen to her dictating to her secretary one of those romantic novels that she turned out fortnightly.

To work (at a job) is to sacrifice the life you have at the moment

If we can't solve the problem, resolve the difference, then embrace the diversity, bring the silence, time will solve the problem and peace will prevail.

If you truly love someone, you will cherish what they despise most about themselves" - Fernando Conclaves

Nor did he care about his childhood, for certainly I never heard him speak of it. I once questioned him about his early days and he would not answer. ‘What is the egg to the eagle?’ he asked me…

It is difficult to call myself a writer, even when I stand at a podium to receive a prize, I feel uncomfortable calling myself a writer—I am merely a word criminal.

Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest violence.

The resilience of these people is amazing. I am a great believer that the sooner we get things up and running in terms of sport in this area, the better.

For my part I prefer fifty thousand rifles to five million votes.

There is no such thing as death.

There are criminals who are drug users, but most addicts are criminals only by virtue of prohibition or from resorting to crime to pay inflated black market prices.