Obscenities are too often used for shock value, as a kind of shorthand for real expression of emotion. You've got to scale down your monstrosities. A scream is not a discovery.

Our salvation never comes in the form we would have chosen.

Sometimes, in that darkness, there is a single act of love, some selfless gesture, an aspiration, and we see that it's not been all waste, all hopeless, and we can ... well ... go on.

Uninvited criticism is insult.

A short story is a writer's way of thinking through experience... Journalism aims at accuracy, but fiction's aim is truth. The writer distorts reality in the interest of a larger truth.

Let good people sin. Give virtue to rotters.

Nothing on earth in fiction is less interesting than characters under the influence of alcohol.

Plot does not simply move with time, but spreads out conceptually in metaphorical space.

Using language like jungle growth isn't the solution to telling a story.

There's something about a parenthesis in fiction that puts one off, saying, "It's me, moi, jumping in now."

What a strange thing it is to recognize a sound like the shriek of a wounded animal, when you've never heard the shriek of a wounded animal.

Dead voices, lost sounds, forgotten noises, vibrations lockstepping into the abyss and now too distant ever to be recaptured!...What sort of arrows would be able to transfix such birds?

...but beautiful mosaics are made of broken pieces.

Anybody who predicts the death of cities has already met his spouse.

If things are real, they're there all the time.

Young people need to re-engage with politics. The life of democracy depends on it. We've left it to the stuff shirts, and obviously they haven't been minding the store.

I just try to work with what I'm given and make it the best I can.

I'm one of three brothers.

For me, running is about freedom. I find that the freer I feel, the faster I am.

On December 18, 1940, Hitler signed Directive Number 21, better known as Operation Barbarossa.

Cornwall has lots of folk and Celtic music and has that kind of surfer vibe as well. That was my kind of upbringing.