I think I can recognize when a piece is at a state of completion. I always say to my wife, "Oh yeah, it's roughly finished." I've got it there. And then there's that whole other phase of moving on to properly amp up the sentences and sometimes to move stuff around as well.

Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.

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.

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.

Foreign governments are going to be poring through all these Donald Trump tweets looking for - to try and discern what it means for foreign policy.

The ideal is to feel at home anywhere, everywhere.

I've never been much drawn towards satire of any kind. I don't like that style whereby you kind of stitch people up. But the deeper thing is that I just find these people so impressive and admirable.