I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

Diversity of thought is in demand, for boosting collective creativity and harnessing collective wisdom.

You are the sum of my infatuation and infinite devotion.

The entire partying lifestyle was superficial in my experience, and most of my friendships were as deep as a shot glass and as short-lived as a pack of cigarettes.

I never knew about a lot of the outside things

Expect the worst and that's what you'll get only it will be much worse.

Brands are selling our self-esteem back to us, through association. We need to own our brands.

Do not think that you are too busy to study the gospel.

Every job I've ever gotten has been an accident. All the jobs I actually go after, I don't get.

Here I am, safely returned over those peaks from a journey far more beautiful and strange than anything I had hoped for or imagined - how is it that this safe return brings such regret?

I don't feel the cold. It's my British blood!