All Quotes

Books are not brands. Some people are very willing to see themselves as a brand, but you can't be a certain type of writer to a certain type of person all the time. It will kill you. ”

We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. ”

If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time. ”

Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control. ”

I tap danced for ten years before I began to understand people don't make musicals anymore. All I wanted to do was be at MGM working for Arthur Freed or Gene Kelly or Vincent Minelli. Historical and geographical constraints made this impossible. Slowly but surely the pen became mightier than the double pick-up time step with shuffle. ”

I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time. ”

People with children will know this: when the childcare is over, it's over on the dot. You immediately have to go into child mode; there's no down time. ”

I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious length of time is so inconceivable to me. ”

The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd. ”

I don't take notes. I don't have any notebooks. I keep on trying to do that because it seems like a very writerly thing to do, but my mind doesn't work that way. I tend to get the idea for a novel in a big splash. ”