Writing a book is as difficult or as easy as any other job. Everyone's job is difficult. So to fetishize difficulties in writing as something extra-difficult or something very privileged - I don't buy that at all.

To write, I think one must sit in one place and be bored. Boredom is a very good state for writers to be. Things cook away in your head when you're bored, and suddenly one day, you have a book or a germ of a book.

Fiction can either be a mirror reflecting you back to yourself or it can be a clean pane of glass looking on the outside.

The bestseller charts, a sure indicator of public taste, tell us with relentless frequency that Marian Keyes or Jeffrey Archer is a better author, by some dizzying six-figure sum, both in numbers of copies and money, than, say, J. M. Coetzee or Patrick White. Are they right?

The IT organization can't drive or lead a digital transformation. It has to come from the business and the business strategy, because they're fundamental to how a company or an organization evolves.

I was brought up in a house with a lot of appreciation for music, all kinds of music, including jazz. But I never knew that it could really be a career. I didn't know any jazz singers. I never saw live jazz. I only heard these records.

Not every time someone gets hit these days with a kick, they don't necessarily take a flat-back. Maybe less flat-backs add time to a career, but if they miss some of it, it just seems like you're done.

I grew up in an environment where it was permittable to use violence to solve a problem. But it was not permittable ever to call the police under any circumstances. That was the kind of doctrine of my household. My dad was a career-long criminal, and you weren't calling the police for any reason.