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

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

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.

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.

Words matter, words have import.