I want to be bored. But I can't. But I really don't want to be this thing that I'm having to be instead of being bored.

What shop did this book come from? she asked. Her father was looking worried at the cooker. He always got rice wrong. I don't know, Brooksie, he said, I don't remember. That was unimaginable, not remembering where a book has come from! and where it was bought from! That was part of the whole history, the whole point, of any book that you owned! And when you picked it up later in the house at home, you knew, you just knew by looking and having it in your hand, where it came from and where you got it and when and why you'd decided to buy it.

I wouldn't call my work Modernist. I would rust if I try to think about labels. I'd feel like the Tin Man in 'The Wizard of Oz.

The head has its confines. The head’s got those all right, and the heart. The heart has its reasons.

My father is from Newark in Nottinghamshire and my mother is from the very north of Ireland. They've ended up in Scotland, where my father - well, both of them - will always be seen as having come from somewhere else.

It is important to know the stories and histories of things, even if all we know is that we don't know.

A good argument, like a good dialogue, is always a proof of life, but I'd much rather go and read a book.