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

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.

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

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

Money isn't success. Success is the character with which you make it.

Maybe sometimes it takes more courage not to fight.-Makino

Paranoia. The more you think of an imaginary problem, the more you feel as though it’s real –

be a dog, be a jerk, be a devil, be a worst imaginable creature, but never be a good man, for being civilized in chaos is itself a chaos.

A hybrid of centralization and decentralization is counter-balance of delivering effective IT capabilities.

You don't have to be a good person to feel like a good person, though. There's a loophole I found where I don't do good, helpful things, but I keep myself in a perpetual state of thinking I might.

I remember a moment when the Prince went back to his old school, Grammar School in Melbourne, and slightly to his horror his old music teacher produced a cello.

I like the team effort of everyone pulling together to make one good project.

I read my books out loud to myself because of the demands of the story and demands of language.

I don't think so. Anyways, I don't spend money. My wife spends money...sorry wife.