I Think It's A Misreading Of Dostoevsky

The Future Continues To Preoccupy Me As A Reliable Source Of Hopes, Fears And Anxieties, But Increasingly The Present Seems To Have No Outstanding Qualities Of Its Own, Being Merely A Way-station Through Which Events Travel To The Vast Shadow Lands Of The Past.

Schadenfreude Is So Nutritious.

Always Carry A Notebook. And I Mean Always. The Short-term Memory Only Retains Information For Three Minutes; Unless It Is Committed To Paper You Can Lose An Idea For Ever.

The Novelist, Quite Rightly, Fears The Psychoanalyst As Both An Enemy And A Usurper.

The British And American Literary Worlds Operate In An Odd Kind Of Symbiosis: Our Critics Think Our Contemporary Novelists Are Not The Stuff Of Greatness Whereas Certain Contemporary Americans Indubitably Are. Their Critics Often Advance The Exact Opposite: British Fiction Is Cool, American Naff.