My Definition Of A Decent Society Is

Completing A Book, It's A Little Like Having A Baby.... There's A Feeling Of Relief And Satisfaction When You Get To The End. A Feeling That You Have Brought Your Family, Your Characters, Home. Then A Sort Of Post-natal Depression And Then, Very Quickly, The Horizon Of A New Book. The Consolation That Next Time I Will Do It Better.

We Lie To One Another Every Day, In The Sweetest Way, Often Unconsciously. We Dress Ourselves And Compose Ourselves In Order To Present Ourselves To One Another.

During The Cold War, We Lived In Coded Times When It Wasn't Easy And There Were Shades Of Grey And Ambiguity.

I Think That All Writers Feel Alienated. ... I Know That I Do. ... I Still Feel, As I Think Most Creative People Do, Absolutely Isolated.

Look... We're Getting To Be Old Men, And We've Spent Our Lives Looking For The Weaknesses In One Another's Systems. I Can See Through Eastern Values Just As You Can See Through Our Western Ones. Both Of Us, I Am Sure, Have Experienced Ad Nauseam The Technical Satisfactions Of This Wretched War. But Now Your Own Side Is Going To Shoot You. Don't You Think It's Time To Recognise That There Is As Little Worth On Your Side As There Is On Mine?