The great thing about novels is that you can be as unshy as you want to be. I'm very polite in person. I don't want to talk about startling or upsetting things with people.

I really practiced hard and got to a certain level of technical proficiency. I overcame some of my limitations. I was a hard-working, dedicated bassoonist, but I have to say I'm not a natural musician.

I'm a sucker for interiors and carefully, beautifully filmed people sitting in a big room. My appetites are simple.

Just as the people who lived through the Second World War thought different things on different days, I think everybody who goes through that period carefully now thinks different things on different days.

In the novel, I can change things and simplify, and make events work towards whatever meanings I'm trying to get at more efficiently.

Shoes are the first adult machines we are given to master.

A bee rose up from a sun-filled paper cup, off to make slum honey from some diet root beer it had found inside.