I like having a plot; I like characters with a reason to get up in the morning.

The real difference between literature and pulp is the kind of emotional responses they elicit. Dan Brown can't pierce your heart. Patricia Cornwell can't make you read a sentence twice and then look sightlessly out of the window.

A lot of crime fiction writing is also lazy. Personality is supposed to be shown by the protagonist's taste in music, or we're told that the hero looks like the young Cary Grant. Film is the medium these writers are looking for.

For some men, life seems to be one long attempt to escape childhood and all the fears of childhood. That's what many of us are doing.

Football makes nonsense of class. It may make nonsense of colour in some circumstances.

There's a high point in your career, and then people get bored; they want something else to come along.