“You have to accept that sometimes that’s how things happen in this world. People’s opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other. It just so happens you grew up at a certain point in this process.”

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.

There is certainly a satisfaction and dignity to be gained in coming to terms with the mistakes one has made in the course of one’s life.

I think it’s quite difficult to understand what kind of life a writer leads. They might be millionaires, or they might be starving people.

What I’m not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we’ve lived through, or feel we’ve had enough time.

As I say, I have never in all these years thought of the matter in quite this way; but then it is perhaps in the nature of coming away on a trip such as this that one is prompted towards such surprising new perspectives on topics one imagined one had long ago thought throughly.

An artist’s concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.

You need to remember that. If you’re to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you.

When you become a parent, or a teacher, you turn into a manager of this whole system. You become the person controlling the bubble of innocence around a child, regulating it.

The Booker triumph of Graham Swift’s moving, effortlessly profound Last Orders is a vindication of the quiet, much-misunderstood path this fine writer chose to take after the brilliance of Waterland more than ten years ago.

The world is crawling with authors touring now. They’re like performance artists.

You say you’re sure? Sure that you’re in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple?

I don’t think it’s any fun, even if you are one of the most respected authors in the world like Margaret Atwood, to keep being nominated and not win.

I discovered that my imagination came alive when I moved away from the immediate world around me.

Everyone wants to learn how to win, but no one wants to learn how to accept defeat.

The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice.

Women hide their imperfections instead of accepting them as an added charm.

Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle.

I’m not going to limit myself just because people won’t accept the fact that I can do something else.

Accept yourself. You don’t have to prove shit to no one except yourself.

Sometimes you have to accept you can’t win all the time.

Wisdom accepts that all things have two sides.