With a novel, no matter where I am in it, I'm fretting about it. Every time I write a book, it starts with great forward momentum. Then there seems to be a period where it slows down a bit, and other things intervene. Then I gain momentum.

All our stories are simultaneously unique and desperately similar, aren't they?

I've been known to write on the Underground in London and on the subway in New York. I have two or three cafes in Paris that I go into. I find a corner with a little shade, and I can work.

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

The decision to write full time was made when I was twenty-eight years old and had just had two small plays accepted for BBC Radio.

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.

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