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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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