I love books that give you space to climb inside there. And you have to run to keep up in places, and you have to fill in a lot of blanks yourself. So it almost...

When I’m out and about, I’ll text or email myself from my phone. A smart phone is a great tool for a writer.

There are a few ‘Raw Shark Texts’ tattoos floating around the Internet now, so I’m gathering them up to post on my forum. It’s a strange thought, knowing that readers are tattooing themselves with something...

The calmer and more well-ordered my desktop is, the more I can convince myself I’m on top of things.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a palaeontologist. I wanted to dig up dinosaurs.

I don’t listen to Nirvana plugged anymore. I think there’s a whole group of people who have semi-forgotten that Nirvana used electric guitars because of the ‘Unplugged’ album. It’s so great.

‘Homeward Bound.’ I find myself listening to that tune a lot when I’m traveling. Sitting in a railway station, wanting to go home, carrying all your stuff with you.

try to visualize all the streams of human interaction, of communication. All those linking streams flowing in and between people, through text, pictures, spoken words and TV commentaries, streams through shared memories, casual relations, witnessed...

I’m excited about how books work in a digital age. When you read a book, unlike a film, you are decoding symbols in order to ‘see’ the story, so it is collaborative in a way...

I’m such a magpie. I’ll get halfway through one thing and pick up something else. I always have 5 or 6 books open and spine-up by my bed: it’s like a row of tents. I...

There’s no way to really preserve a person when they’ve gone and that’s because whatever you write down it’s not the truth, it’s just a story. Stories are all we’re ever left with in our...

Are Simon & Garfunkel cool, or are they just really uncool? I can’t decide.

Longhand isn’t well suited to my way of writing. I tend to end up with dozens of pages of crossings-out and margin scribbles just to find one good paragraph, and it’s easy to lose your...

oThere’s no way to really preserve a person when they’ve gone and that’s because whatever you write down it’s not the truth, it’s just a story. Stories are all we’re ever left with in our...

I’d love a signed first edition of ‘City of Glass’ by Paul Auster. My favourite book of all time.

One of the coolest things about touring around, actually, is getting to meet people, and getting to pick up on things that other people like. So many times, people come up to me after a...

But I’m old now and Ward has made himself rich and powerful. He has the resources to ensure that one day he’ll perfect his standardising system and if that happens, instead of a thousand Wards...

I’m a bit suspicious of people who are narrow in their musical tastes.

It’s like they say about soldiers coming back from war. People all around you are dying. Really dying, Eric. You go in for a week’s chemotherapy and you’re in a ward with people who are...

Every single cell in the human body replaces itself over a period of seven years. That means there’s not even the smallest part of you now that was part of you seven years ago.

I think there’s a danger of becoming too familiar with things, isn’t there? That you kind of, when you’re used to seeing the same things every day, you see those things come what may, and...

There’s no way to really preserve a person when they’ve gone and that’s because whatever you write down it’s not the truth; it’s just a story. Stories are all we’re ever left with in our...

Beer. It always seems like such a good idea at the time, doesn’t it? What’s worse is beer seems like an even better idea after you’ve had some beer.

Sometimes, I seem to be only able to actually move and get going with things on the razor edge of possibly still managing whatever it is I’m supposed to do. I think, secretly, I might...

He was a great man, my granddad, a very calm, logical and methodical guy. I suppose I’m trying to be more like him as I get older.

I have notebooks and sketchbooks for ideas. I also have drawers full of envelopes covered in quick outlines, scenes or scraps of dialogue that I don’t want to forget. I tend to grab whatever’s to...

Twitter is incredibly useful. It’s a great example of how the Internet is changing the way we engage with information and text. Above all else, this change in the nature of engagement is fascinating for...