In old age, you realise that while you're divided from your youth by decades, you can close your eyes and summon it at will. As a writer it puts one at a distinct advantage.

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.

Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present.

It seems to me that anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd.

We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.

All I know for certain is that reading is of the most intense importance to me; if I were not able to read, to revisit old favorites and experiment with names new to me, I would be starved - probably too starved to go on writing myself.

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