English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of the big, baggy novel, but there's definitely an advantage to having a little bit more control.

People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them.

I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.

A lot of [George Saunders] early stories now feel prophetic. Take the recent election [of Donald Trump]. Historians in 100 years might write about it as being the first internet election, in which what happened was actually an expression in the real world of a virtual reality. And you've been writing about that subject for a while.

Time is how you spend your love.

It's a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final word.

The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.