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

I dont know if there is a personal identity. We all imagine that we are absolute individuals. But when we begin to look for where this individuality resides, its very difficult to find.

These days I must take the world in small and carefully measured doses. It is a sort of homeopathic cure I am undergoing, though I am not certain what this cure is meant to mend. Perhaps I am learning to live amongst the living again. Practising, I mean. But no, that is not it. Being here is just a way of not being anywhere.

I've always been fascinated by physics and cosmology. It gets more and more scary the older you get.

With the crime novels, its delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. Its like having a fictitious family.

Life is tragic but it's equally comic.

I don't make a distinction between men and women. To me they are just people.