Why Is Mr Universe Always

I'm Very Happy For Whatever Plaudits Might Come The Way Of My Work, But I Never Ever Sit Down To Write X With Y In View - Whether It's A Reader, A Prize Or A Sale.

To Attempt To Write Seriously Is Always, I Feel, To Fail - The Disjunction Between My Beautifully Sonorous, Accurate And Painfully Affecting Mental Content, And The Leaden, Halting Sentences On The Page Always Seems A Dreadful Falling Short.

A Short Story Is A Shard, A Sliver, A Vignette. It's A Biopsy On The Human Condition But It Doesn't Have This Capacity To Think Autonomously For Itself.

I Think Of Writing As A Sculptural Medium. You Are Not Building Things. You Are Removing Things, Chipping Away At Language To Reveal A Living Form.

Life, It Is True, Can Be Grasped In All Its Confused Futility Merely By Opening One's Eyes And Sitting Passively, A Spectator On The Stands Of History - But To Understand The Social Processes And Conflicts, The Interplay Between Individual And Group, Even The Physicality Of Human Experience, We Have Need Of Small-scale Models.