Nostalgia Is Something We Think Of As

One Has To Be Able To Twist And Change And Distort Characters, Play With Them Like Clay, So Everything Fits Together. Real People Don't Permit You To Do That.

I Don't Think You Have The Right To Shout About Other People's Private Life.

I Thought I Would Be An Organic Chemist. I Went Off To University, And When I Couldn't Understand The Chemistry Lectures I Decided That I Would Be A Zoologist, Because Zoologists Seemed Like Life-loving People.

So In The First Draft, I'm Inventing People And Place With A Broad Schematic Idea Of What's Going To Happen. In The Process, Of Course, I Discover All Sorts Of Bigger And More Substantial Things.

I Went To Work In 1962, And By '64 I Was Writing All The Time, Every Night And Every Weekend. It Didn't Occur To Me That, Having Read Nothing And Knowing Nothing, I Was In No Position To Write A Book.