Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary

It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.

Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting.

When you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world

There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond this there is great unrest.

In an oppressive society the truth-telling nature of literature is of a different order, and sometimes valued more highly than other elements in a work of art.

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