I Prefer To Write First Drafts As

For Myself, I Haven't Been Content To Carry On Producing Books That Merely Strain Against The Conventions - As I've Grown Older, And Realised That There Aren't That Many Books Left For Me To Write, So I've Become Determined That They Should Be The Fictive Equivalent Of Ripping The Damn Corset Off Altogether And Chucking It On The Fire.

Most Of Us Have Had That Experience - At Around Puberty - Of Realising That, Despite Whatever Efforts We Put Into Our Chosen Sports, We Will Become At Best Competent.

I Think Of Writing As A Sculptural Medium. You Are Not Building Things. You Are Removing Things, Chipping Away At Language To Reveal A Living Form.

If The Government Announced That It Was Going To Allocate A Vast Tranche Of Education Funding Purely To The Pupils At The Best Public Schools, There Would Be A National Outcry - And Yet This Is Precisely What The Olympics Represents In Terms Of Sports Funding.

There's A Flip Side To Having Prominent Public Intellectuals, Which Is That They Start Meddling In Politics And Often With Quite Disastrous Results.