I'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

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.

I read to learn. I teach to understand. I practice to gain experience and wisdom.

He keeps getting older while I'm not paying attention.

The Indians were well mounted and felt proud and elated because they had been made United States soldiers.

Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.

First one works alone through the mind, then before the public through experience.

The future of our nation depends on providing our children with a complete education that includes music.

As far as all of our identities are dependent on how other people imagine us we are all making ourselves and each other up all the time

They speak of "This Dojo" and "That Dojo". They are looking for profit.

In order to forgive reason for the evil it has wrought on the majority of men, we must imagine for ourselves what man would be without his reason. 'Tis a necessary evil.

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.