“Now naturally, like many of us, I have a reluctance to change too much of the old ways.”

Many of our deepest motives come, not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, but out of something that is frozen from childhood.

People aren’t quite sure what it means when a book is a Booker Prize winner. They’re not quite sure what is being recommended, what literary values it stands for, because every year it stands for something different.

Don’t you wonder sometimes, what might have happened if you tried?

I cannot start a story or chapter without knowing how it ends. Of course, it rarely ends that way.

I’ve always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.

I grew up in Britain before it became a multicultural place, so in many ways I have a nostalgia for an England that’s vanished – the England of my childhood has actually disappeared.

I want my words to survive translation.

Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won’t be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It’ll be because people have changed. They’ll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It’s healthy.

Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.

It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed.

All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.

People were incredibly kind to our family and went out of their way to help.

Because maybe, in a way, we didn’t leave it behind nearly as much as we might once have thought. Because somewhere underneath, a part of us stayed like that: fearful of the world around us, and no matter how much we despised ourselves for it–unable quite to let each other go.

After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?

Typically in my novels the narrator tells a story by remembering, and the memories are colored by this and colored by that. So the whole universe of the novel tends to be framed by the narrator’s memories and thoughts.

As a writer, I’m more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

Woman is a most charming creature, who changes her heart as easily as she does her gloves.

Tastes and preferences change with time, But I fall in love with you daily.

If it’s not broken, break it. That’s how new discoveries are made. That’s why everything that changes life is called a breakthrough.

This week, I’m a gypsy. Maybe next week it’ll be glitter rock.

Happy he who learns to bear what he cannot change.

Often the wicked prosper, while the righteous starve; yet I would never exchange my state for theirs, my virtue for their gold. For mine endures, while riches change their owner every day.

My first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn’t like math;in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything.

Life changes when you least expect it to. The future is uncertain. So, seize this day, seize this moment, and make the most of it.