My parents were hippies, and the story is that they went through a dictionary looking for a beautiful word to name me. They nearly called me Banyan, but flipped a few pages on and reached "China," thankfully. The other reason they liked it is that "china" is Cockney rhyming slang for "mate." People say "my old china," meaning "my old mate," because "china plate" rhymes with "mate.

I'll never be a minimalist. The fact that the prose is more tightly controlled doesn't for a minute mean that it's minimalist. I very much like arcane words and baroque sentence structure.

I'd never understood the injunction not to regret anything, couldn't see how that wasn't cowardice.

A city like London was always going to be a paradox, the best of it so very riddled with the opposite, so Swiss-cheesed with moral holes.

My sustenance is information. My interventions are hidden. I increase as I learn. I compute, so I am.

My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give.

My Google-fu is strong.