I felt suddenly very young - or perhaps I felt my age.

As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the repercussions of your tantrums, not least my family, now facing war thousands of miles away.

I think there's a natural link between the fact that our self is a story that we make up and that we're drawn to stories. It resonates, in a way.

The anger is useful too because when things about the world upset you, that is really a fertile feeling to channel into fiction and to put out into books.

I was, in my own eyes, a veritable James Bond — only younger, darker, and possibly better paid.

I think the idea of migration through time is very important because every human being does that and it unites us with people who migrate through geography.

Readers don't work for writers. They work for themselves.