We do not read to pass the time, but to inhabit time..

Once upon a time, I thought that politics was the name we gave to our higher instincts. That was before Margaret Thatcher, who came to power when I w….

My solo travels in Paris have brought many perfect hours of being alone but not a moment of loneliness. People who depend on other people are often i….

It's not a crime not to know yourself. It's not a crime to send life away. It's just a shame..

The first rule of travel is that you should always go with someone you love, which is why I travel alone..

Given that most movies are bad, and that there are whole categories and sub-categories of badness - the sequel, the Madonna Movie, the Friday 13th Se….

A living museum must surely see itself as a locus of argument. A breathing art institution is not a lockup but a moveable feast..

I wasn't like other boys. At any rate, I wasn't like my three elder brothers: they excelled at football and they were like other boys, going up to be….

The working class of England take their deracination completely for granted. Disenchantment is the happy code that informs every byway of the undercl….

A good nationalism has to depend on a principle of the common people, on myths of a struggling commonality..

I think I am becoming obsessive-compulsive. David Beckham apparently turns all the Diet Coke cans in his fridge to face the same way every morning, a….

Interviewing is not a democratic art..

As an old creative industry full of cruelty and moral sense, British journalism once flourished on the imperative that people required the truth in o….

I was 10 when I realised I couldn't stand football. I'd tried, obviously, before this - no one wants to give in to social pariah-hood without a fight….

Traveling alone offers the chance to test the limits of what you think you know about yourself..

I grew up in a working-class community. I come from a big family. I knew Donald Trump would win because I knew he is what poor Americans think a rich….

It was beguiling to live in a country, Scotland, that didn't look enough like itself to be a location for its own movies... I remember consulting a f….

I've been asked which of the other arts novel-writing is most like, and I have come to believe it is acting. Of course, in terms of pattern it can be….

I'm not interested in writers who are overcome with certainty, with single-mindedness, or with a sense of how consistent and morally upstanding they ….

Writing a novel is an act of self-annihilation as much as self-discovery. You can kill whole appetites and flood whole depths while plumbing them, bu….

As a writer I care about America, and care about its carelessness..