We don't like admitting this, but it is a key component of human existence: the fact that life has the potential for things both wondrous and horrific.

There is much to be said for solitude.

I want to be a popular novelist who's also serious, or a serious novelist who's also very accessible.

We all talk about how much we hate lies. Yet we prefer, so often, to be lied to....because it allows us to dodge all those painful truths we'd rather not hear.

But what we can never do is change the story that has made us what we are. It's a story completely dictated by the accumulation of life's manifold complexities—its capacity for astonishment and horror, for sanguinity and hopelessness, for pellucid light and the most profound darkness. We are what has happened to us.

From Graham Greene, I learnt how to be an accessible writer who grapples with our doubts as sentient individuals.

Success is a very fragile veneer. I get wary of people who embrace celebrity. It ruins people.