As for critical writing about modernism, its moments of lucidity are but fulgurations illuminating the dark and incomprehensible landscape of its subject's unabashed difficulty.

In truth, even if they have an imperfect insight into their own methods, I still slightly mistrust writers of fiction who are assured literary critics; it makes me suspect that they favour the word over the world it should describe. Such scribes fall victim too easily to the solecism of equating style with morality.

My novels tend to come about from a fusion of two big ideas, creating a critical mass that then fissions, throwing off hundreds of other particles, riffs, tropes and characters.

Certainly, for time out of mind, an obsessive dwelling on happier former days has been synonymous with getting older, while it was the juvenescent who rushed with open arms to embrace the future.

I was looking at the sights, thinking, 'I used to play there a couple of years back, and now I'm on the coach with the England team.'

When I started out as a little kid, I didn't say 'I just want to run football.' I wanted to be a great athlete.

The music I like or the football teams I like or the food I eat has nothing to do with me being black.

I found my luck in Leipzig. We achieved the goal of playing internationally much faster than we had intended. There are certainly worse destinies than being coach of such a team.