I never bought the idea of individual genius from which the novel spews forth. It's always an act of curation.

I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.

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

The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.

Those beliefs about the essential goodness or beauty of the world are fundamentally paper-thin bullshit. There's not an essential belief that isn't a contingent belief. It could all be destroyed in a second, at any second. And I have an issue with that.

I lost many literary battles the day I read 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.' I had to concede that occasionally aphorisms have their power. I had to give up the idea that Keats had a monopoly on the lyrical.

Don't live in a way that makes you feel dead.