I think that there's something extremely beautiful about the Olympic ideal and its motto - 'Swifter, higher, stronger' - it's such a beautiful motto, and it celebrates everything which is the antithesis of death and dissolution and entropy.

Something I am now convinced of, after researching Everyone Brave, is that none of us is born courageous in all respects.

[My maternal grandmother ] was a teacher in London and elsewhere during the war, although the children she taught were not the "lost children" who feature in the novel - those come from my research.

The future looks like gasoline. . . . crude oil . . . is the future before it has been refined. It is like a dream of the future, really, and like any dream it ends with a rude awakening.

It is easier for a rich person to act on their principles than it is for someone with fewer choices (which is why it is all the more disappointing when a wealthy person plays to the crowd).

I'm a much better writer for being a father.

We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.