“Walk free from the long shadows cast by small people.”

“What I am interested in, what I write and care about, exists in the slow lane, somewhere between hand-ploughed fields and a pint of real ale.”

“Eyesight can be so blinding. We need to look beyond the face of things.”

“Theres no such thing as writers block, so long as youve had plenty of time to think about what you want to write.”

“The process of creation begins way before one starts writing.”

“I needed some space to lay myself out, so that I could decide which pieces I wanted to pick up.”

“Publish a book before youre too old to read it without glasses.”

“I have never known anything to be as exquisite or as excruciating as the Love-Hate relationship I have with writing.”

“As with writing by candlelight, ones greatest ideas come from the flickering between darkness and light.”

“There are times you wake up in the middle of the night, fingers hit the keyboard and you allow words to flow. That is a writer.”

“Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time anyone...”

“Five common traits of good writers: (1) They have something to say. (2) They read widely and have done so since childhood. (3) They possess what Isaac Asimov calls a "capacity for clear thought," a...”

“There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean hell, I know that.”