“As with a wound on one’s own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things.”

Its was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one’s development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one’s ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has a new standard by which to judge oneself.

To see the best before I have properly begun would be somewhat premature.

I felt slightly superior to student politics, for instance. I had no reason to think this, but I thought of myself as slightly more seasoned. I became quite cynical talking to my student friends.

I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographical or experimental stuff.

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.

So I find words I never thought to speak In streets I never thought I should revisit When I left my body on a distant shore.

That’s how it always is in the entertainment industry, your feet are always treading Jello.

American men, as a group, seem to be interested in only two things, money and breasts. It seems a very narrow outlook.

Courage conquers all things: it even gives strength to the body.

My lonely soul drowns in empty bodies.

‘Why are we here?’ I inquired of my body, spirit, and soul. ‘Here to do whatever feels good.’ Said the first. ‘Here to do what feels good.’ Said the second. ‘Here to choose.’ Said the third. ‘Between both.’

Move or die is the language of our Maker in the constitution of our bodies.

An active mind cannot exist in an inactive body.