We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.

Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.

I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English prep school. So the way to get round it was to become the school joker, which I did quite effectively - I was always fooling around to make the people who would otherwise dump me in the loo laugh.

There are things that are not spoken about in polite society. Very quickly in most conversations you'll reach a moment where someone goes, 'Oh, that's a bit heavy,' or 'Eew, disgusting.' And literature is a place where that stuff goes; where people whisper to each other across books, the writer to the reader. I think that stops you feeling lonely – in the deeper sense, lonely.