We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse: we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard.

I rather like getting away from fiction.

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

I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.

The past is our ultimate privacy; we pile it up, year by year, decade by decade, it stows itself away, with its perverse random recall system.

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.

If people don't read, that's their choice; a lifelong book habit may itself be some sort of affliction.