A photograph is a universe of dots. The grain, the halide, the little silver things clumped in the emulsion. Once you get inside a dot, you gain access to hidden information, you slide into the smallest event. This is what technology does. It peels back the shadows and redeems the dazed and rumbling past. It makes reality come true.

Not long ago, a novelist could believe he could have an effect on our consciousness of terror. Today, the men who shape and inflence human consciousness are the terrorists.

Naturally a direct comparison of terrorist and novelist is complete nonsense. But there was once a time when the novelist also had some influence on how his contemporaries thought, the way they saw the world, the way they lived.

Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world.

It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now.' The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That's really what writing is—an intense form of thought.

First you look for discipline and control. You want to exercise your will, bend the language your way, bend the world your way. You want to control the flow of impulses, images, words, faces, ideas. But there's a higher place, a secret aspiration. You want to let go. You want to lose yourself in language, become a carrier or messenger.

Too much has been forgotten in the name of memory.