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.

When you are lonely, writing can keep you company. It is also a form of self-compensation, a way of making up for things—as opposed to making things up—that did not quite happen.

Life is bearable even when it's unbearable: that is what's so terrible, that is the unbearable thing about it.

I've never really liked L.A., because of its sprawl.

I think, about the distinction between fiction and nonfiction. Fiction is not really about anything: it is what it is. But nonfiction - and you see this particularly with something like the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction - nonfiction we define in relation to what it's about. So, Stalingrad by Antony Beevor. It's "about" Stalingrad. Or, here's a book by Claire Tomalin: it's "about" Charles Dickens.

I want to stress, this is the experience-growing up in a working-class family-that defined me and continues to define me. It's the core of my being. And it explains, incidentally, a good deal about my love of America.

One's happiness is very largely a question of state of mind rather than the world you are looking at.