Malcolm Bradbury

If God had been a liberal, we wouldn't have had the Ten Commandments - we'd have the Ten Suggestions.

Culture is a way of coping with the world by defining it in detail.

The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth.

I was writing poetry, and the Mountain Goats was an outgrowth of that.

Recently, I was in Bernalda, my dad's ancestral home town in Italy. He has just refurbished a palazzo and turned it into a hotel, so we had my sister's wedding there. It was beautiful.

It took me realizing that a broken heart has never actually killed anyone to find the courage to ask for what I want, in just about every situation. That was part of my own growing up.