A very beautiful young woman once asked me to sign her breasts. That was back when I was a hip young thing - it's been all downhill since then.

In truth, even if they have an imperfect insight into their own methods, I still slightly mistrust writers of fiction who are assured literary critics; it makes me suspect that they favour the word over the world it should describe. Such scribes fall victim too easily to the solecism of equating style with morality.

Many of my works fall into the category of "Zeitgeist novels." Yet I hope that they aren't only reportage, but also attempts to convey the sense of the present to the future.

There is a deep sadness to American poverty, greater than the sadness of any other kind. It's because America has such an ideology of success.

The British and American literary worlds operate in an odd kind of symbiosis: our critics think our contemporary novelists are not the stuff of greatness whereas certain contemporary Americans indubitably are. Their critics often advance the exact opposite: British fiction is cool, American naff.

I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to reveal a living form.

I'd rather fiddle with my phone for precious seconds than neglect an apostrophe; I'd rather insert a word laboriously keyed out than resort to predictive texting for a - acceptable to some - synonym.