As I said, I had no publisher for What a Carve Up! while I was writing it, so all we had to live off was my wife's money and little bits I was picking up for journalism.

I like the rain before it falls. of course there is no such thing, she said. That's why it's my favorite. Something can still make you happy, can't it, even if it isn't real.

I'm one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood.

The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me.

Objectivity is just male subjectivity.

You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it.

Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are.

Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't.

Some people don't realize that a straight 'No' can be the kindest answer in the world.

Ah, well, I have no talent for nonfiction, that's my problem.

For many weeks after [my wife] died, I could not get used to the feeling of coldness and lifelessness on her side of the bed - and it was even worse when they took the body away and buried her.

The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.

Fairness is a term that is interpreted different ways. For the government, fair is whatever suits their needs.

I done something bad, it was to believe that to read a book you must be a stupid guy. No people which read they are clever - the guy who said this is stupid guy!

I grew intoxicated with my own eloquence.

If you say that you're all about a certain something, and look back and see that the choices that you've made don't reflect that, then there's something for you to look at.

I love doing action movies, I love pushing myself to the limit.

Trash has given us an appetite for art.

Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.

History is everything that has ever happened.