The Booker 2011 is of no more interest to me than the world heavyweight championship, which I'm not going to win either. It's irrelevant.

Surely: the adverb of a man without an argument.

Proust is a hero of mine. I read 'A la recherche' in one go, and I'm a very slow reader. It had an astonishing impact, reading it on my own and being my main company. I think Proust is the most intelligent person to ever have written a novel.

Well, the attractive thing about the subject of happiness is that it is notoriously difficult to write.

Looking after children can be a subtle way of giving up... They become the whole ones, the well ones, the postponement of happiness, the ones who won't drink too much, give up, get divorced, become mentally ill. The part of oneself that's fighting against decay and depression is transferred to guarding them from decay and depression. In the meantime one decays and gets depressed.

Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn't have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over.

People never remeber happiness with the care that they lavish on preserving every detail of their suffering.