But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry whether it's the writer or the spy.

You have a strange relationship with calamity when you're a writer: you write about it as an artist you objectify and fetishize it. You render life into material and that's a creepy thing to do.

I can see how a relationship with a writer would be an easy thing.

What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar is the test of their power.

It's the writers' job to make it positive. It's my job to make it real.

Since I can barely write two books a year the best solution seems to be co-author projects. My goal isn't to get another writer to clone me... it's more to produce a book that shares my vision of positive fun entertainment.

As writers and readers as sinners and citizens our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.

But you cannot expect every writer to dwell on human suffering. I think my books do deal with grave issues. People who say they are too positive probably haven't read them.

Broadcasters or politicians or writers who think that they are respecting Struggle Street the battlers by dumbing things down into one-line sound bites are not respecting them they are treating them with contempt. It's our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them.