At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We have jobs, children, partners, debts. This is the part of us to which literary fiction speaks.

As to the number of novels I've abandoned... I shudder to think. I have thrown away five completed novels, and that's a gruesome enough figure. But not necessarily a waste of effort.

When I was 13 or 14, I started devouring novels; literature took quite a while to take me over, but it caught up just in time to save me from becoming a mathematician.

Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses.

Find the extraordinary inside the ordinary.

And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end

As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read.