Maybe all of us at Hailsam had little secrets like that -- little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone without fears and….

Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, t….

It never occurred to me that our lives, until then so closely interwoven, could unravel and separate over a thing like that. But the fact was, I supp….

So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy.

If I'm alone at home, I get increasingly restless, bothered by the idea that I'm missing some crucial encounter out there somewhere. But if I'm left ….

What he wanted was not just to hear about Hailsham, but to remember Hailsham, just like it had been his own childhood. He knew he was close to comple….

When you become a parent, or a teacher, you turn into a manager of this whole system. You become the person controlling the bubble of innocence aroun….

I think jogging is bad for your health. All that pressure on the knees and back cannot be good for you..

There is certainly a satisfaction and dignity to be gained in coming to terms with the mistakes one has made in the course of one’s life.

It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed..

Every country should have a strong literary tradition of its own at the center, but it should also have an interest in other countries..

There's still a part of me that thinks I have to write a really good novel. I'm not trying to say I'm not happy with the novels I've written in the p….

What is pertinent is the calmness of beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, its own greatness, and feels n….

I was a little concerned that a lot of people thought I wrote Merchant Ivory movies. I also thought if I was ever going to write something strange an….

My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and ….

When I see films made from books, I make a huge effort not to remember the book. It's important to see the film as a film..

After all, when we were children, when things went wrong, there wasn’t much we could do to help put it right. But now we’re adults, now we can. That’….

She might be a great person, but life's so much bigger than just loving someone..

Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking..

Love isn't about when you first meet. It's about the many, many years you spend together, when you're trying to keep that flame burning..

There are things I am more interested in than the clone thing. How are they trying to find their place in the world and make sense of their lives? To….