Art you can flush down the loo means nothing to me, even were the loo to be selected by Marcel Duchamp

I grew up in a working-class community. I come from a big family. I knew Donald Trump would win because I knew he is what poor Americans think a rich person looks like. And I knew that Hillary Clinton would annoy voters in their tens of millions, because she basically sucked at communicating with poor people and seemed like a person who'd been powerful and rich for decades. She was a disastrous candidate. I mean, she was up against a psychopath and she still lost. The country's thinking was beyond her, literally.

Once upon a time, I thought that politics was the name we gave to our higher instincts. That was before Margaret Thatcher, who came to power when I was 11 years old.

The idea that people in novels should be more sympathetic than people in life simply baffles me.

As a writer I care about America, and care about its carelessness.

A good nationalism has to depend on a principle of the common people, on myths of a struggling commonality.

Always trust strangers, it's the people you know that let you down.