If you're growing up in times of peace and live in a country where there's plenty of food and good healthcare, you grow up without any relationship with death.

The minute you become a leader of a country, you go into a very small club. You join that sort of pantheon of other world leaders.

If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable, rather than its literal narrative.

To what degree are historians chroniclers of the truth and to what degree are they just novelists, frankly?

Firms are a bit concerned about things like oil prices and US growth but actually the change (in firms expectations) is quite small so I think broadly theyre looking for more of the same.

I wrote 'Hereafter' quickly and without mapping it out too much or being too schematic. As an exercise, I think that was incredibly important.

Generally, I read nonfiction. Theres very little fiction that I enjoy enough to spend my time reading. I am generally a nonfiction guy.

Movies feel like work, and reading fiction feels like work, whereas reading nonfiction feels like pleasure.

I just try and do something good. But as a writer, you're slightly out of control.

I am not a politics wonk. I like the idea of my writing reflecting more about who I am or other people.

The real beauty in my professional experience has been friendships and collaborations with filmmakers.

From what you didn’t say, lies that you did say.

The purpose of teachers should be to add to the sum of human knowers rather than the sum of human knowledge.

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand

You know I don’t listen to market gossip, ” she began, “but it is hard not to hear it when my daughter’s name is mentioned.

When I play discos in Belfast or freshers' week in Oxford, there are 1, 800 kids dressed as me. It's odd, it's funny, and it pays really well.

But I do not have the reader in mind when I write. No true writer does that

I always hope to be a better person tomorrow than today.

All life long, the same questions, the same answers.

I am happy with my Bangladesh.

The absolutist takes himself to speak to the ages, with the tongue of angels, but the relativist hears only one version among others, the subjectivity of the here and now.