I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.

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.

Your career is your business.

You will suffer and you will hurt. You will have joy and you will have peace.

Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.

My beauty secret is to try to keep my heart as open and happy as I can, because it really makes the sad lines on my face look better.

There are very few songs about just liking someone as a friend.

Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.

The famous balance of nature is the most extraordinary of all cybernetic systems. Left to itself, it is always self-regulated.

When I was a kid, like 14 or 15, I played with the waiters from the hotel, 'cause that was the best game. And these guys, they'd let me play. And they were black guys.

I think the notion of retirement is just a dreadful, dreadful idea and I hope I never have to do that.

Mastermind and collaborate with other smart entrepreneurs if they have futures that are even bigger than their present.