I live in Dublin, God knows why. There are greatly more congenial places I could have settled in - Italy, France, Manhattan - but I like the climate here, and Irish light seems to be essential for me and for my writing.

The secret of survival is a defective imagination.

In my books you have to concentrate, but I work hard to make it that, when you do, the rewards are quite high.

Life is tragic but it's equally comic.

Enormous morning, ponderous, meticulous; gray light streaking each bare branch, each single twig, along one side, making another tree, of glassy veins.

Art is amoral, whether we accept this or not; it does not take sides. The finest fictions are cold at heart.

The Booker Prize is a big, popular prize for big, popular books, and that's the way it should be.