Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore superior.

In 1980, I published my first novel, in the usual swirl of unjustified hope and justified anxiety.

Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.

I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.

Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't.

Love may not lead where we think or hope, but regardless of outcome it should be a call to seriousness and truth. If it is not that - if it is not moral in its effect - then love is no more than an exaggerated form of pleasure.

Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke.