Telegraph | Arts | A writer's life: Anthony Lane : "'People think that you have these things called ideas and that writing is a matter of imposing them on the subject material, whereas it's only in the writing that I discover what it is that I think. And I can only write to deadline. I can't do the blank sheet. You know, 'Chapter One: he adored New York…' And I don't do the specifically sharpened pencils in the specifically designed notebook in the specifically built dacha…


'I understand the urge for the dacha, but I can't afford it and, besides, I have the feeling that writing can be all the better for being squeezed in around life. The other day I wrote a piece sitting on the floor of the train to Cambridge, which was straight out of Buster Keaton, with squatting room only. And there was one point last summer when there was someone on every floor of the house, so I wrote on the staircase with my computer on my lap. My thighs got sunburnt, which constitutes an accident at work. I am suing myself.


'Perhaps I understand artistic sensibility but not sensitivity. I don't do feuds, tears at midnight or guttering candles. I do sometimes do racking of the brow, but only with things like car insurance. I was once working on a newspaper and a new arts editor was appointed and the first day he turned up in a new hat and cape. As if…"