People don't like being around despair. Our tolerance for the truly hopeless, for those who are irredeemably broken by life is strictly limited. The sob stories we like are the ones that end before we're bored.

I'm a reader of Chinese literature, I like their films, but also: I've had great difficulty getting my work published in China; very little of it has been published there. The first two attempts to have all of my work published, for instance, were refused without any reason ever being given.

I discovered that if you find the language to talk to younger readers, children can accept anything.

If you have children you worry about the world you're leaving them.

Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say.

I've always prided myself on my discipline as a writer. I do it like a job. I get up in the morning and go to my desk.

At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British power. It's extraordinary that at the moment in which England was the global superpower the subject of British power appeared not to interest most writers.