Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house. His writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls. Put him in a nice detached villa and he'd never have written a word.

We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place. Some local boys come in and there is a bit of chat between them and the fish…

I have no doubt that in heaven the angels will regard the blessed as a necessary evil.

To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper-whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.

I realized that it was not by wisdom that poets write their poetry, but by a kind of nature or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets; for these a…

If you're working with words, it's got to be poetry. I grew up with Kerouac. If he hadn't wrote On The Road, the Doors would have never existed. Morrison read …