It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency.

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.

When love comes first, actions will follow.

Since periods of great change, such as the present one, come so rarely in human history, it is up to each of us to make the best use of our time to help create a happier world.

I never work out. I think it is boring, so I run.

It's the sustained ability to change that really counts.

To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.

Running is a kind of truth serum. It brutally strips away everything you put on and leaves you with only yourself.

I am the worlds laziest writer.

Last four months were great for me, was probably one of the best four months of my career, playing unbelievable in the clay court season.

Stop and go: always on some journey. My bounty is a photograph or two.

When it comes to performance art, I am more interested in the failures then the so-called successes. I have never cared for entertaining anyone.