Very Few Of My Characters Are Based

When You’re Young You Prefer The Vulgar Months, The Fullness Of The Seasons. As You Grow Older You Learn To Like The In-between Times, The Months That Can’t Make Up Their Minds. Perhaps It’s A Way Of Admitting That Things Can’t Ever Bear The Same Certainty Again.

In Britain I'm Sometimes Regarded As A Suspiciously Europeanized Writer, Who Has This Rather Dubious French Influence.

Sometimes You Find The Panel, But It Doesn’t Open; Sometimes It Opens, And Your Gaze Meets Nothing But A Mouse Skeleton. But At Least You’ve Looked. That’s The Real Distinction Between People: Not Between Those Who Have Secrets And Those Who Don’t, But Between Those Who Want To Know Everything And Those Who Don’t. This Search Is A Sign Of Love I Maintain.

Whores. Necessary In The Nineteenth Century For The Contraction Of Syphilis, Without Which No One Could Claim Genius.

(on Grief) And You Do Come Out Of It, That’s True. After A Year, After Five. But You Don’t Come Out Of It Like A Train Coming Out Of A Tunnel, Bursting Through The Downs Into Sunshine And That Swift, Rattling Descent To The Channel; You Come Out Of It As A Gull Comes Out Of An Oil-slick. You Are Tarred And Feathered For Life.