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... →
Zadie Smith
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... →
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.
It seems that if you put people on paper and move them through time, you cannot help but talk about ethics, because the ethical realm exists nowhere... →
English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of... →
Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well.
Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are.