The first thought that occurred to me, that night when I heard the chairman of the jury announce my name, was, Just think how many people hate me at this moment. Naturally, I wanted to annoy those people even further by being arrogant.

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

Everything we do is tinged with the knowledge that this may be the last time that we will do this, and that makes what we're doing incredibly sweet.

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

If they give me the bloody prize, why can't they say nice things about me?

All a work of art can do is present the surface. I can't know the insides of people. I know very little about the inside of myself.

Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to make one's living from writing sentences. The sentence is the greatest invention of civilization. To sit all day long assembling these extraordinary strings of words is a marvelous thing. I couldn't ask for anything better. It's as near to godliness as I can get.