Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news.

A committee is an animal with four back legs.

The creation of George Smiley, the retired spy recalled to hunt for just such a high-ranking mole in 'Tinker, Tailor,' was extremely personal. I borrowed elements of people I admired and invested them in this mythical character. I'm such a fluent, specious person now, but I was an extremely awkward fellow in those days.

During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.

Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

People will occasionally ask me if I understand what it's like to be lonely. And the truth is I don't, because for me, solitariness is a blessing, a gift. Me, I get on fine with myself.

You can't sit down and decide what you want to write about.

Sadly, bird illustration has always been an under-appreciated art.

I moved south when I was 11 years old, moved to England. I've lived in all kinds of places, all parts of England.

I always wanted to be a painter. I loved painting. I went on three different art courses but had no talent whatsoever.

The older I get, the happier my childhood becomes.

'The Asylum Dance' was written after I'd moved back to Scotland and was a response to moving to my old home area of Fife.

I'm interested in the way language is used to navigate the world around us.

The Botanischer Garten in Berlin has one of Europe's finer winter trails, leading in careful order from glasshouses devoted to African-American and Australian desert species, through a fine collection of tropical plants, and on to the orchid house.

It takes a true encounter to realise that real animals, wild animals, have all but passed from our lives.

If I tell you a story, you can choose to believe me, or you can question it.

The only pleasure in redecorating or moving house comes from stumbling across books that I'd almost forgotten I owned.

I'm an insomniac, so my perfect reader is probably another insomniac.

'Moby-Dick' really threw me. I read it when I was 14 and my best friends were books. It changed the way I looked at the world.

When you have a child, you think about your personal history and what you offer them as a larger narrative, and I realised I knew nothing about my father's circumstances other than what he'd told me.

As a child, I was consumed with a near-obsessive curiosity about what the world felt like for other creatures.

I remember when I first encountered anthropocentrism. I was in primary school and, in preparation for our confirmation, the class was learning about the afterlife.

Once upon a time, forests were repositories of magic for the human race.