I always try to create conflict and drama in my books; it's the engine of the novel.

If the culture is so all pervasive that you can’t think outside of it, how are you making genuine choices?

She touched his hand for the last time. "Oh, Karim, that we have already done. But always there was a problem between us. How can I explain? I wasn't me, and you weren't you. From the very beginning to the very end, we didn't see things. What we did--we made each other up." p. 382

A new car is not going to change your life.

The thing about getting older is that you don't need everything to be possible any more, you just need things to be certain.

Sometimes I look back and I am shocked. Everyday of my life I have prepared for success, worked for it, waited for it, and you don't notice how the days pass until nearly a lifetime is finished. Then it hits you--the thing you have been waiting for has already gone by. And it was going in the other direction. It's like I've been waiting on the wrong side of the road for a bus that was already full." p. 265

I started writing 'Brick Lane' when my children were two years and five months old. We were on holiday in the north of England when I was overtaken by a compulsion to start writing.