The novel is resilient, and so are novelists.

I never went to university. I'm self-educated. I didn't go because I was too impatient, too arrogant.

All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.

He knows that after him everything will continue on much as before, except that there will be a minuscule absence, a barely detective gap in the so-called grand scheme, one unit fewer now. Or not even that, not even an empty space where he once was, for all will rush immediately to fill that vacuum. Pft. Gone. Recollections of him will remain in the minds of others for a while, but presently those others too will die and his few relics with them. And then all will be dark.

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

What is money, after all? Almost nothing, when one has a sufficiency of it.

The past beats inside me like a second heart.