Every novel generates its own climate, when you get going.

I've always been fascinated by the operation of memory - the way in which it is not linear but fragmented, and its ambivalence.

The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss.

History unravels; circumstances, following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravelled.

I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children.

I'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

The idea that memory is linear is nonsense. What we have in our heads is a collection of frames. As to time itself-can it be linear when all these snatches of other presents exist at once in your mind? A very elusive and tricky concept, time.