When I was born I became the visible corner of a folded map. The map has more than one route. More than one destination. The map that is the unfolding self is not exactly leading anywhere. The arrow that says YOU ARE HERE is your first coordinate. There is a lot that you can't change when you are a kid. But you can pack for the journey.

London is a small place, and it is very incestuous. People know where you live. Everybody is sort of on top of each other.

Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.

Only a fool tries to reconstruct a bunch of grapes from a bottle of wine.

For me, the most painful thing is the thought of shelves without books. This is the problem with the digital thing. I do not want to see it on electronic. I do not want to see all of those indices on Kindle. I don't want this physical object to disappear, because when it's there and it's present, it's continually suggesting new relationships in a way that an electronic index couldn't.

To me, life, for all its privations, is a luminous thing. You have to risk it.

My characters are always on the outside; the spotlight's not on them. But they do get somewhere.