You can’t state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.
All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.
As far as I’m concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.
Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still.
Can’t a rapper insist, like other artists, on a fictional reality, in which he is somehow still on the corner, despite occupying the penthouse suite?
Don’t we all know why nerds do what they do? To get money, which leads to popularity, which leads to girls.
English fiction was something I loved growing up, and it changed my life – it changed the trajectory of my life.
I don’t keep any copies of my books in the house – they go to my mum’s flat. I don’t like them around.
I like books that don’t give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.
I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction.
I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.
I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight.
I wrote ‘White Teeth’ in the late nineties. I didn’t really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.
I’m most honest about writing when I’m talking to family or friends, not to newspapers.
If you’re going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.
Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.
The object of the passion is just an accessory to the passion itself.
Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.
He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.
You say you want to talk, But you don’t. You stonewall me.