He thinks, I remembered you, Thomas More, but you didn't remember me. You never even saw me coming.

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 you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

In my 20s I was in constant pain from undiagnosed endometriosis. With no prospect of a cure, I decided I needed a career - writing - that could accommodate being ill.

Fiction leaves us so much work to do, allows the individual so much input; you have to see, you have to hear, you have to taste the madeleine, and while you are seemingly passive in your chair, you have to travel.

People will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with.

[Margaret Thatcher] is a woman who, when she wrote her entry for "Who's Who," didn't include her mother. Now whether that was corrected in subsequent editions, I do not know.