Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.

I believe that the experience of childhood is irretrievable. All that remains, for any of us, is a headful of brilliant frozen moments, already dangerously distorted by the wisdoms of maturity.

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

But who knows their own child? You know bits - certain predictable reactions, a handful of familiar qualities. The rest is impenetrable. And quite right too. You give birth to them. You do not design them.

Unless I am a part of everything I am nothing.

The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the concerns of fiction.

I didn't write anything until I was well over 30.