"We live in the country, and I have a huge library there. When we go to London for the winter I never know which books to take. I never know what I am going to need. That's the only disadvantage."

"Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates."

"The process hasn't changed, but the writer has developed. I still get up every morning and go to work."

"I obviously prefer writing novels but I take my journalism very seriously, and I enjoy doing it between novels. It gives me an opportunity to move in the outside world."

"If you're writing a novel, you're in a room for three or four years. There's not much coming in from the outside."

"In Canada, nobody is ever overthrown because nobody gives a damn."

"Coming from Canada, being a writer and Jewish as well, I have impeccable paranoia credentials."