The internet has created a transnational audience. If you publish something in the New York Times, it's read all over the world. Who knows how big this audience is or how long it will last.

I feel the responsibility of the novelist is to create a very complex world populated by very complex individuals and to deepen that as much as possible. I don't think the responsibility of the reporter or journalist is fundamentally different.

There is this idea of history as something you make, as a meaningful narrative with a beginning and an end, the end being a utopia of happiness that we'll reach through socialism or free trade or democracy, and then it will all be wonderful.

Most writers have very little that's important or valuable to offer; most of them are just repeating each other.

I feel that I already have the life I love and I don't see how it could be improved radically by any greater material success I might have - bigger advances, more prizes. It's a kind of madness. And the culture of prize-giving is so corrupt.

Most books germinate within you for a long time before they are ready to come out. I wrote several drafts of the novel over many years and when I finally got to the last one, it didn't take much time.

Most suffering is human-made and avoidable. It's mostly in your head.