Scientists do stand on the shoulders of giants, just as do writers. Conversely, in the arts we do make discoveries. We do refine our tools. So I am arguing with, or at least playing with, the idea that art never improves.
At the risk of sounding like Virginia Woolf, I could live on £700 a year.
I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play I feel a little sorrowful that I'll never know the man, or any man of such warm intelligence.
Some people are tied to five hundred words a day, six days a week. I'm a hesitater.
The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy, personal secrecy.
I've yet to meet somebody who said, 'Your stories are so revolting I couldn't read them.'
