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?
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.
It was a kiss from the past.
I’m not sure if you’re the person for me any more.
The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with.
This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.
Generally, women can’t do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men. Unrecognizable.