Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.

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

Art is the Western myth, with which we both console ourselves and make ourselves.

Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control.

I love to dance, and sing - in the shower, not in public. Im too old to go raving, but my fondest memories are of that kind of thing - dancing, with lots of people, outside if possible.

Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still.

It has historically been a comfort for the bourgeois and that you can read the most extreme books and not change. You can read A Christmas Carol and not change in any way.