I wish I got a lie-in on Saturday mornings but I never do.

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

What worries you, masters you.

When two people got cross with each other and stop talking, the deep silence in the air will continue to speak glowingly!

If you want something in this life, reach out and grab it.

You should choose organisations that are going to be flexible and supportive and recognise people are going through different stages in their careers and actually need different sorts of support.

The real requirement, if we are to avoid runaway global warming, is probably 80% by 2030, and almost no burning whatever of fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) by 2050.

What worries me is that we are increasingly enmeshed in incompetent systems, that is, systems that exhibit pathological behaviour but cant fix themselves.

Excellence is never granted to man, but as the reward of labour.

We go lightheartedly on our way, never thinking that by a careless word or two we may have altered the whole course of human lives, for some person will take our advice and use it.

Meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer meetings the better.