The loneliness of writing is that you baffle your friends and change the lives of strangers.

All the different ways we know the world all come from the brain, and they all depend on each other to make sense.

Type a few lines of code, you create an organism.

This idea that a book can either be about character and feeling, or about politics and idea, is just a false binary. Ideas are an expression of the feelings and the intense emotions we hold about the world.

We will live with racism for ever. But senses of self, senses of belonging, senses of us and of others? Those are up for grabs.

In 25 years of writing novels, I've never had anything that felt like writer's block.

Music forecasts the past, recalls the future. Now and then the difference falls away, and in one simple gift of circling sound, the ear solves the scrambled cryptogram. One abiding rhythm, present and always, and you're free. But a few measures more, and the cloak of time closes back around you.