I Like The Idea Of A Big

I Was Mainly In A State Of Nervousness While I Wrote It - Nervousness That It Was Far Bigger And More Complicated Than Anything Id Attempted Before, And That Maybe My Talent Just Wasnt Up To It And The Book Would Have To Be Abandoned, Or Would Turn Out Not To Work At All When It Was Finished.

Contemporary Britain Seems An Endlessly Fascinating Place To Me - But If I Knew A Little Bit More About Other Places, And Other Times, Maybe It Wouldn't.

I Was Going To Say 'my Friend Stuart', But I Suppose He's Not A Friend Any More. I Seem To Have Lost A Number Of Friends In The Last Few Years. I Don't Mean That I've Fallen Out With Them, In Any Dramatic Way. We've Just Decided Not To Stay In Touch. And That's What It's Been: A Decision, A Conscious Decision, Because It's Not Difficult To Stay In Touch With People Nowadays, There Are So Many Different Ways Of Doing It. But As You Get Older, I Think That Some Friendships Start To Feel Increasingly Redundant. You Just Find Yourself Asking, "what's The Point?" And Then You Stop.

It Seems To Me That You Would Have To Write A Novel On A Very Small, Intimate Scale For It Not To Become Political.

Sometimes I Feel That I Am Destined Always To Be Offstage Whenever The Main Action Occurs. That God Has Made Me The Victim Of Some Cosmic Practical Joke, By Assigning Me Little More Than A Walk-on Part In My Own Life. Or Sometimes I Feel That My Role Is Simply To Be A Spectator To Other People's Stories, And Always To Wander Away At The Most Important Moment, Drifiting Into The Kitchen To Make A Cup Of Tea Just As The Denouement Unfolds.