One of the reasons so many nonfiction books are so boring is because what they've done, very diligently, is fulfill the terms of their proposals. They've written up their proposal, long-form, and often what this does is then set up a sort of serial deal, where the whole book can essentially be reduced back to the size of the original proposal!

The ideal is to feel at home anywhere, everywhere.

There's always something impressive when people are giving themselves to their job absolutely. The military thing - I was conscious that their routine, their way of living is so opposite to mine. In some ways their life seemed intolerable to me. But, mine would be to them, too, because this strangely laissez-faire life of mine actually comes with its obligations as well.

What I'm really interested in, as a reader and as a writer, is the idea of the nonfiction book that is not defined by its content, by its "about"-ness. Where you read it irrespective of whether you're interested in the subject.

These days any self-respecting exhibition of nude photos has to have pornographically explicit images to prove that they are works of art.

Getting too much money too soon can be really bad. There's a balance to be kept - the right balance between new experience and a certain stability in one's life. I'm conscious of all these things in a way that, earlier on, I was only conscious of circumstantial stuff, like, money.

Beware of clichés. Not just the ­clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought - even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are ­clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.