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

It's easy to confuse a woman for a philosophy

Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don't join fashionable 'schools of thought.' Read everything.

Are there other people who, when watching a documentary set in a prison, secretly think, as I have, 'Wish I had all that time to read'?

I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.

When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.

When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other people's, the mottos, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment - once you have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not recognise and do not believe in - what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception.