Quotes of the day

(Well, not exactly of the day - more of a couple of weeks ago...)

"We're meaner and more competitive than athletes, good athletes who want to be the very best there is. No one understands that writers have personalities quite as ugly as the ugliest athlete."

"Novelists are a bit like actors. You only need to have five per cent of something in you to be able to act it."

"Everything I detest has prospered. Ugly high-rise architecture, plastic, and the automobile have prospered. When I was young, we used to think, those of us who were writers, that novels would change the world. No, it's television that changes the world."

Norman Mailer talks to Robert McCrum in the Observer.

Also well worth reading: McCrum's amusing guide to understanding Publisherspeak. Beware of the blurb!