There are about as many ways to be dead as there are to be alive. People linger in different ways, both publicly and privately.

You write a book and you finish the book. That's your job done, right? You win the Booker and you have a whole new job. You have to be the thing, right? So instead of writing the story, you somehow are the story. And that I found that sort of terrible.

I think writers worry that you might not exist in some strange way if you're not writing.

I do not think we remember our family in any real sense. We live in them instead

I’m really lucky with the people around me. They know me, so they don’t confuse the issues really. They know what a book is and they know who I am and they know the difference between the two.

I work at the sentences. Many of the things people find distinctive about my writing, I think of as natural.

Having kids is very difficult to do on your own, and it's really crazy difficult to think you're doing it as a team and to find out that you're not actually part of a team.