I started writing 'Brick Lane' when my children were two years and five months old. We were on holiday in the north of England when I was overtaken by a compulsion to start writing.

The thing about getting older is that you don't need everything to be possible any more, you just need things to be certain.

If the culture is so all pervasive that you can’t think outside of it, how are you making genuine choices?

If you think you are powerless, then you are

A new car is not going to change your life.

I'm very eclectic in my music tastes - anything from Nina Simone to Beethoven to Talvin Singh.

You know how if you're born in a certain situation you always expect your life to run on a steady trajectory? I've never really had a sense of that. I assume that life is going to go up and down.

The thought of writing was always pleasant, but the process was painful

I was always an outsider, always standing outside, observing and trying to figure things out. Which is exactly what you need to do as a writer, I suppose.

I don't want to get hung up on what 'people,' that nebulous mass, think about me. That's the way to unhappiness, I think.

I always try to create conflict and drama in my books; it's the engine of the novel.

God made man because he loves to hear stories, Alessandro said. That's a good story, huh?

I'd been a stepparent for about two years with a woman who had a child, and I came to realize I adored children and was good with them. So I was very happy when Anna got pregnant.

If we repeal [ Barack Obama's health care law] as Donald [Trump] has proposed, all of those benefits I have mentioned are lost to everybody...and then we will have to start all over again.

Pete Egoscue has totally changed my life. Never have I experienced such complete pain relief as I have by following the Egoscue Method.

When the Champions League is at stake, ... you do everything you can, whether it's called gamesmanship or cheating, to put the opposition off.

I'll be honest, there's a part of me that does think I'm held to a different standard than my contemporaries and peers, and it's a little frustrating.

I try not to do scenes a certain way, because then I become conscious of it, and it dosen't come off as realistic. I try to make it so that I'm not really aware of what I'm doing.

Man never creates, he only recombines the lines and colors of his own existance.

My family has always supported me completely and kept me grounded. I never got lost in child Hollywood actor weirdness.

Sometimes you must go against the wheel's turn.