And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared.

English, as a subject, never really got over its upstart nature. It tries to bulk itself up with hopeless jargon and specious complexity, tries to imitate subjects it can never be.

Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.

There's a perception that novels can't usually allow for your kind of absolute attention to detail.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

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

For me, [deep structures] might be something very simply to do with the split in my family. That's why I'm always thinking about opposites. It's so childish, really, but that might be simply what it is.