I Started As A Songwriter And Wanted

What Interests Me Is The Surprising Enormous Extent To Which Most People Accept The Fate That's Been Given To Them, And Find Some Dignity.

I Saw A New World Coming Rapidly. More Scientific, Efficient, Yes. More Cures For The Old Sicknesses. Very Good. But A Harsh, Cruel, World. And I Saw A Little Girl, Her Eyes Tightly Closed, Holding To Her Breast The Old Kind World, One That She Knew In Her Heart Could Not Remain, And She Was Holding It And Pleading, Never To Let Her Go.

The Book Was At A Reasonably High Position On The New York Times... Before I Was In The Country. I Thought It Would Be An Interesting Experiment To See If My Presence Here Would Push It Up Or Down.

People Aren't Quite Sure What It Means When A Book Is A Booker Prize Winner. They're Not Quite Sure What Is Being Recommended, What Literary Values It Stands For, Because Every Year It Stands For Something Different.

I'm Interested In Memory Because It's A Filter Through Which We See Our Lives, And Because It's Foggy And Obscure, The Opportunities For Self-deception Are There. In The End, As A Writer, I'm More Interested In What People Tell Themselves Happened Rather Than What Actually Happened.