English fiction was something I loved growing up, and it changed my life - it changed the trajectory of my life.

Then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging,it seems like some long, dirty lie ... and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?

You don't come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn't a strong aspect of your personality. A reality shaped around your own desires - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.

Today, writing seems to me like an incredible luxury, almost a perversity, something which hardly exists in the world anymore, where you get to see the fruits of your actions in a daily way.

Without the balancing context of everyday life, all you have is the news, and news by its nature is generally bad.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.