There is much to be said for solitude.

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.

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.

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.

The only time you truly become an adult is when you finally forgive your parents for being just as flawed as everyone else.

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