Born in Jerusalem, Wadie Said went from being a dragoman to a salesman in the United States and thence to a hugely successful businessman in Egypt.

I've always been fascinated by the operation of memory - the way in which it is not linear but fragmented, and its ambivalence.

We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance.

I'm not a historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past.

It seems to me that anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd.

The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the concerns of fiction.

We all act as hinges-fortuitous links between other people.

The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss.

We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.

Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are.

The Photograph is concerned with the power that the past has to interfere with the present: the time bomb in the cupboard.

If you feel trapped quit thinking about the trap and start thinking about your value. Life favors value. Value is your way out.

Artie is going to do what ever Artie wants to do.

Real life security and contentment come not from putting a gun in the cupboard, but from taking a role in the world's future.

I think my music tastes keep changing, so I think the music I make changes a little bit.

I will take on the epidemics of gun violence and campus sexual assault, so that everyone in America is safe and respected, no matter who they are, where they live, or who they love.

I once sent him a song and asked him to mark a cross wherever he thought it was faulty. Brahms returned it untouched, saying 'I don't want to make a cemetery of your compositions.'

'My Life' is not an autobiography. It's just music.

Colonel Walker, did it ever occur to you that General Jackson is crazy?

I don't want to do a TV series. It's no fun working from dawn to sunset every day. An occasional movie would be fine, and then I'll see what might develop on the political front.

Obamacare premiums are of no concern to people in the establishment. Same thing with illegal immigration, same thing with trade deals.