I want to write the sort the book that my people want to read, even if the market is small.

One has to choose a word in English. If you want to be eligible for a literary prize you have to designate it as something.

Wonder - the sensation of being whisked out of time and space...to be bathed in ... epiphanous delight.

You turn your life into a work of art in order to redeem the ordinariness - a condition you are stuck with.

There is a mental space that we consciously makes our way back to, and give honour to what has formed us in this mental homeland which we carry with us always. It is important not to try to annihilate it but to take your courage in your hands and go back, and then I think you can more easily make a new beginning. A lot of us would like to know how to do this.

[Anton] Chekhov is the most produced playwright in the world after Shakespeare, and most of the people in my sort of audience would have seen at least one of his plays.

You are obviously writing out of experience and so the boundaries are always blurred, it is just that sometimes it would seem that you are playing with fire a little bit by choosing someone that obviously existed.