I had been plunged into a different world. I found myself spending half my time answering weird questions on book tours in the Midwest. People would stand up and explain to me the situation in their office and ask me whether they should resign or not.

Its was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one's development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one's ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has a new standard by which to judge oneself.

I want my words to survive translation.

I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel you can get right inside somebody's head.

Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers.

One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event.

I think it's quite difficult to understand what kind of life a writer leads. They might be millionaires, or they might be starving people.