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

Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are.

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'm not a historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past.

I'm now an agnostic but I grew up on the King James version, which I'm eternally grateful for.

You learn a lot, writing fiction.

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.