I half closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I’d ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I...

What is more, sir,” his lordship went on, “I believe I have a good idea of what you mean by ‘professionalism.’ It appears to mean getting one’s way by cheating and manipulating. It appears to...

I work very regular hours, roughly 9 to 5:30. I think I have it much easier than a lot of parents. I just sit at home.

For a great many people, the evening is the most enjoyable part of the day. Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt...

Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won’t be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It’ll be because people have changed. They’ll be like you, Puffin. More...

Its was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one’s development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one’s ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has a new...

People aren’t quite sure what it means when a book is a Booker Prize winner. They’re not quite sure what is being recommended, what literary values it stands for, because every year it stands for...

What he wanted was not just to hear about Hailsham, but to remember Hailsham, just like it had been his own childhood. He knew he was close to completing and so that’s what he was...

I went many years without even associating Nagasaki with the atomic bomb. Then in the 1980s, when there was a new concern about CND and so on, Nagasaki took on this symbolic value. I felt...

Never Let Me Go,

What I’m not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we’ve lived through, or...

You’re always in a rush, or else you’re too exhausted to have a proper conversation. Soon enough, the long hours, the traveling, the broken sleep have all crept into your being and become part of...

What is difficult is the promotion, balancing the public side of a writer’s life with the writing. I think that’s something a lot of writers are having to face. Writers have become much more public...

I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in...

All you decent, well-meaning gentlemen, let me ask you, have you any idea what sort of place the world is becoming all around you? The days when you could act out of your noble instincts...

More fundamentally, I’m interested in memory because it’s a filter through which we see our lives, and because it’s foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I’m...

I don’t think it’s any fun, even if you are one of the most respected authors in the world like Margaret Atwood, to keep being nominated and not win.

She always wanted to believe in things.

Until then, I was knocking on doors. Afterward, my wife and I started to get a different kind of dinner invitation altogether.

My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation.

Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?

One day, maybe not so long from now, you’ll get to know how it feels.” So you’re waiting, even if you don’t quite know it, waiting for the moment when you realise that you really...

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.

When my own time comes, will I too long for the sea? I think I will be content enough with the soil. And I will not demand the exact spot, but let it be within...

I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they’d once belonged to the sea.

I do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke...

When I got to 40 or so… I had the sense when I looked back over my life I would actually see a mess of decisions, a few of which I had thought about, some...

In any case, while it is all very well to talk of ‘turning points’, one can surely only recognise such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed...

I still have a suspicion of charity and think the state has a role to play in many areas. And although for most of the years since I have been a rather privileged writer, I...

I think the judging process is full of integrity, compared to some other prizes around the world. The fact that they change the panel of judges every year keeps it from becoming corrupt. I think...

But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while...

You need to remember that. If you’re to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you.

I felt I had almost written myself into a corner. You could say I’d rewritten the same novel three times and I thought I had to move on. The success of the book, and then...

If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.

All I know is that I’ve wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I’d get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don’t want it anymore,...

Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it’s something we can’t easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen?...

As a writer, I’m more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

Naturally—and why should I not admit this—I have occasionally wondered to myself how things might have turned out in the long run…. I only speculate this now because in the light of subsequent events, it...

Screenplays I didn’t really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

The book was at a reasonably high position on the New York Times… before I was in the country. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if my presence here would push...

There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.

What do you think dignity’s all about?’The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by surprise. ‘It’s rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir,’ I said. ‘But I...

When you are young, things like your moral stance and your political position seem very important. I’d spend long nights with my friends sorting out moral and political positions that we thought would take us...

How so much honourable is such a contest, in which one’s moral conduct and achievement are brought as witnesses rather than the size of one’s purse.#Page: 10

It was like there was some parallel universe we all vanished off to where we had all this sex.

I’m wondering if without our memories, there’s nothing for it but for our love to fade and die.

I was a little concerned that a lot of people thought I wrote Merchant Ivory movies. I also thought if I was ever going to write something strange and difficult, that was the time.

It was a fine feeling indeed to be standing up there like that, with the sound of summer all around one and a light breeze on one’s face. And I believe it was then, looking...

I couldn’t speak Japanese very well, passport regulations were changing, I felt British, and my future was in Britain. And it would also make me eligible for literary awards. But I still think I’m regarded...

I had been plunged into a different world. I found myself spending half my time answering weird questions on book tours in the Midwest. People would stand up and explain to me the situation in...