Quite often, ambition operates on a level of irritation. Not even jealousy, just irritation.

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

To be interested in something is to be involved in what is essentially a stressful relationship with that thing, to suffer anxiety on its behalf.

I don't like my books being defined by their "about"-ness. So now the subtitle has just become a kind of strap-line on the cover.

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.

I guess that as life is speeded up and our capacity for concentration is being nibbled away at by all the obvious things, that leads us actually to be more susceptible to boredom.