For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together.

A novel should be a book of questions, not a book of answers.

Like a historian, I interpret, select, discard, shape, simplify. Unlike a historian, I make up people's thoughts.

But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it.

I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker and you have to stop all that to write a novel.

It was a very funny conference. I knew [Christopher Hitchens] before that. He had always been a good angel to me. He once stole a phrase from me that came out of his mouth on television. I saw his eyes move sideways. I thought, It's alright, you can have it! The conference was light on women. Salman Rushdie showed up, they were doing their own thing. I didn't feel neglected!

If I am feeling broken, I can pick up one of [Ivy Compton-Burnett] books and the next morning I can write again. It puts my mechanism back.