Books are something social - a writer speaking to a reader - so I think making the reading of a book the center of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea.

I think art comes from some sense of discomfort with the world, some sense of not quite fitting with it.

Reading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their individual imprint on a book they have read. Once of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.

Every book I've written has been a different attempt to understand something, and the success or failure of the previous one is irrelevant. I write the book I want.

Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive -- is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a slow pastime that lacks efficiency and does not contribute to the common good.

Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.