My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it.

Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves.

I went to boarding school and then I went to Oxford, and I know how easy it is for certain groups of people to become wholly insulated from ordinary life.

...and there was nothing to do except to wait and to hurt.

I suffer depression only in the sense that I am a writer. We don't have proper jobs to go to. We are on our own all day. Show me a writer who doesn't get depressed: who has a completely stable mood. They'd be a garage mechanic or something.

I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut.

And it's best if you know a good thing is going to happen, like an eclipse or getting a microscope for Christmas. And it's bad if you know a bad thing is going to happen, like having a filling or going to France. But I think it is worst if you don't know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing which is going to happen.