In fact, writing, especially writing autobiographical works, and this is actually the fourth time I've done it, each time I've done it I've felt deeply immersed in the material as I'm doing it, and then it's over and everything is the same.

It's an ethical pact I've made with myself and with the reader - not to invent. And when I can't remember, I say I can't remember. I'm just appalled by the memoirs published by people who regurgitate dialogue, conversations from when they were small children, and they go on for three or four pages. I can't even remember what we said to each other ten minutes ago! How can I remember what was said sixty years ago? It's not possible.

You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.

Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.

And that's why books are never going to die. It's impossible. It's the only time we really go into the mind of a stranger, and we find our common humanity doing this. So the book doesn't only belong to the writer, it belongs to the reader as well, and then together you make it what it is.

I walk around the world like a ghost, and sometimes I question whether I even exist. Whether I've ever existed at all.

For some reason, all my characters come to me with their names attached to them. I never have to search for the names.