Benjamin Griffin

‘You ought never to edit except when awake.’

Janine di Giovanni

‘We sat for sometime, and I found after a while that there was little I could say.’

Janine di Giovanni

I always begin bedtime stories to my son the same way: ‘Once upon a time, a long, long time ago . . .’

Issue 111

Colin Grant

‘It was a big news day. We were going to look for a piece of lino for the back room.’

Seamus Heaney

‘I called his name, although I knew / The answer this time would be silence / That kept me standing listening while it grew.’

William Fiennes

‘We talked a lot about voice – the idea that everyone has a voice, their own voice, and this is something to be valued and celebrated.’

Colin Grant

‘Such a spectacle could not have been envisaged ten years previously at the time of Bob Marley’s death from cancer.’

Issue 110

Yann Faucher

Issue 85

Giles Foden

‘Deo Gratias stood on the deck of the Liemba with his prisoners at his feet. I leaned on the rail, studiously casual.’

Ted Hodgkinson

‘My friends say I am secretive and devious,’ he wrote in the introduction to Picasso and Dora. ‘They’re right.’

A. M. Homes

‘They have created stage sets, backdrops, candy-coloured scenarios, Kodacolor bright landscapes onto which you can project your fantasies.’

Janice Galloway

‘Sex Education, like winning the pools, was something that did not happen to us.’

Ruchir Joshi

Ruchir Joshi travelled around rural India for our ‘Work’ issue, documenting parts of the country’s informal economy, and meeting people with working lives that are unseen, or unique, or damaging.

Rodrigo Fresán

‘What would be the point of writing anything if I went down in history as the person who killed Borges?’