The Photograph is concerned with the power that the past has to interfere with the present: the time bomb in the cupboard.

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.

Unless I am a part of everything I am nothing.

The dead know everything but they don't give a damn.

Too young for Korea, too old for Vietnam.

We all have an interest in making sure teens grow up healthy and drug-free.

When we press the thorn to our chest we know, we understand, and still we do it.

On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME.

If camping is so great, why are the bugs always trying to get in your house?

I think I actually did write about love because I kind of had a fear of it, like we all do, nobody wants to get hurt.

Some people make a separate argument about the red light cameras. They say it just changes the type of crash that's most likely to occur at an intersection.

I'm fearless, I don't complain. Even when horrible things happen to me, I go on.