I want my words to survive translation.

I grew up in Britain before it became a multicultural place, so in many ways I have a nostalgia for an England that's vanished - the England of my childhood has actually disappeared.

I want my words to survive translation.

I don't really like to work with literary allusions very much. I never want to be in a position where I'm saying, "You've got to read a lot of other stuff" or "You've got to have had a good education in literature to fully appreciate what I'm doing."

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.

I discovered that my imagination came alive when I moved away from the immediate world around me.

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