I don't want to get hung up on what 'people,' that nebulous mass, think about me. That's the way to unhappiness, I think.

The thing about getting older is that you don't need everything to be possible any more, you just need things to be certain.

If the culture is so all pervasive that you can’t think outside of it, how are you making genuine choices?

If you think you are powerless, then you are

A new car is not going to change your life.

I'm very eclectic in my music tastes - anything from Nina Simone to Beethoven to Talvin Singh.

You know how if you're born in a certain situation you always expect your life to run on a steady trajectory? I've never really had a sense of that. I assume that life is going to go up and down.

The thought of writing was always pleasant, but the process was painful

I was always an outsider, always standing outside, observing and trying to figure things out. Which is exactly what you need to do as a writer, I suppose.

I started writing 'Brick Lane' when my children were two years and five months old. We were on holiday in the north of England when I was overtaken by a compulsion to start writing.

I always try to create conflict and drama in my books; it's the engine of the novel.

No man is much pleased with a companion who does not increase in some respect his fondness of himself.

I think friends are an extension of you and I always say, check out a persons five immediate friends and you'll know everything about them.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do.

It's my duty as a human being to be pissed off.

Someone gave me wishes and I wished for an embrace.

If the truth were self-evident, eloquence would be unnecessary.

Lord Jesus, You are my righteousness, I am your sin. You took on you what was mine; yet set on me what was yours. You became what you were not, that I might become what I was not.

If a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood.

I'm going to make a prediction - it could go either way.

When I was 9 or 10 years old it wasn't the thing to be seen doing - reading a book in your spare time.