Maybe the Kindle was the Bowflex of bookishness: something expensive that, when you commit to it, forces you to do more of whatever it is you think you should be doing more of.

When I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write prose by reading poetry.

People don't like to read text on computer screens (and reading a lot of text on iPod screens gets very tiring very soon, just about as soon as running out of battery power).

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 am closer to the pacifist side, in that I think that the British response to German aggression, which was to try to starve the Continent into a state of revolt and to terrorize German civilians with bombing raids, was part of the total catastrophe.

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

If you write every day, you're going to write a lot of things that aren't terribly good, but you're going to have given things a chance to have their moments of sprouting.