I wouldn't write about people who are living and who are close to me, because I think it's a very violent thing to do to another person. And anytime I have done it, even in the disguise of fiction, the results have been horrific.

Fate is a quantity very much like TV: an unstoppable narrative, written, produced and directed by somebody else.

I am very selfish, really. I lived for love.

When I see my friends engaging in a Twitter war for an afternoon, I think that would destroy me for a month.

The last page of [Lincoln in the Bardo] - without giving too much away - involves somebody entering somebody else. Not in a sexual way. But it says one of the simplest things you could ever say, which is that we must try and be inside each other. We must have some kind of feeling for each other and enter into each other's experience.

Surely there is something to be said for drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be?

I don't keep any copies of my books in the house - they go to my mum's flat. I don't like them around.