Every artist has a Dorian Gray slaving away in the attic. - John Banville

Let's not despise story-telling. Like all novelists, I have this low desire to tell people stories.

I feel a kind of intellectual regret, not an emotional regret, at having left my parents and that world behind. But it's not a great weight on my soul. In a way I wish it were. To leave one’s background without guilt is an indication of shallowness of character, I suspect.

I'm a little surprised that commercial success has arrived. I used to think that it was hopeless, that it would never happen.