“When I go back to the core of my childhood, my cousin Lucy seems alway...” — Martin Amis Quote

“When I go back to the core of my childhood, my cousin Lucy seems always to be in the peripheral vision of my memories. She is off to one side, always off to one side, with a book, with a scheme or a project or an enterprise.”

“Deciding to write a novel about something - as opposed to finding you are writing a novel around something - sounds to me like a good evocation of writer's block.”

“Present-day Spain translates as many books into Spanish, annually, as the Arab world has translated into Arabic in the past 1,100 years.”

“I had a nice childhood, even though I grew up in hotels.”

“My memoir is a story of family and childhood, and everyone has had one of those. Mine is not the definitive version of childhood, but it's a great way to start a conversation.”

“I spent 90 percent of my childhood playing SNES and N64, and my favorite games were the ones packed with secrets.”