One minute you've got a lucky star watching over you and the next instant it's done a bunk.

Before I came to England, my favorite authors were P. G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie. I used to devour both.

Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet...Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.

Sometimes when you finish a book, you don't know quite what you've got.

In a novel, if you're any good, you don't just have good people or bad people. You have complicated people. You have real people.

The question I'm always asking myself is: are we masters or victims? Do we make history, or does history make us? Do we shape the world, or are we just shaped by it? The question of do we have agency in our lives or whether we are just passive victims of events is, I think, a great question, and one that I have always tried to ask.

To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?