The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form.

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 I'm nervous, I stutter, and I had to keep stopping and starting.

Prosperity is apt to prevent us from examining our conduct; but adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is beneficial to us.

The acquirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind; but that armour would be worse than useless, that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend.

Gentle day's flower - The hummingbird competes With the stillness of the air.

Opportunity never knocks; it is within you.

Humble people ask for help.

You know, it's hard to beat bacon at anytime of day. But I also am a big fan of corned beef hash.

I am a late starter. I like to go on into the night when it's quiet and everything has shut down. I find that's where music and minds open in the dark.

In America, if you want to make it as a golfer, you go to college on a scholarship. In Australia, you go to the airport with a plane ticket. The competition just isn't there.