Love perhaps includes the promise that when the mob comes for you I'll go against the mob.

The creative part of oneself finds its way out. In this case, I got interested particularly in the medium of Twitter and looked for ways to use it creatively.

Echo is very important to me. I love the repetition of motifs, or the slight alteration of what's been said before. This is part of how one creates a mood, a psychological caul, in fact, around the reader.

I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.

Yes, there's a relaying of internal states that only a novel can achieve. In my view, the novel is one of Europe's greatest gifts to the world. America and Africa collaborated to give the world jazz. We'll call it even.

So, for a book set in 2006, Open City evades certain markers, while it embraces certain others. Julius doesn't use a smartphone, and he doesn't discuss contemporary US politics in any fine detail.

Not explicitly, no. Compared to this enormous, relentless evolutionary activity in the built environment, writing is small potatoes.