A novel usually begins, in my experience, with a thought or image that won't leave me alone. — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
I do believe in that thing about the reading audience being very important to the formation of the novel at its birth. — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
The 'stuff' in novels touches on every aspect of the world and people's lives. That's what makes it so remarkable just how… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
“In all memory there is a degree of fallenness; we are all exiles from our own pasts, just as, on looking up… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
Once I've properly finished a book, my ideal state of being would be to never think about it again. But with 'Capital,'… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
I have a horror of going down dead ends, which you can easily do with a novel, spending months on it and… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
One of the things I have noticed about my novels is that they all concern people who can't quite bring themselves to… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
I'm an omniviorous reader, but I don't read what could overlap with my own work. It's like tuning a radio frequency -… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
To make three films out of one shortish book, they have to turn it into an epic, just as 'Lord of the… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
I'm fortunate in having journalism as a sideline to pay the bills, and I essentially do it in order to take as… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
I rather envy writers who do variations on a theme. I like reading those books, but in practice, I can't do it. — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
I think the Internet was invented specifically to stop people finishing their books. And it does quite a good job. I don't… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
In a democracy, people tend to get the kind of government they deserve. — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
My standard Nando's order is a chicken breast burger served 'medium,' which is still fairly spicy. — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
“Bastiat (1801–1850) was a strikingly clear-minded early advocate of what came to be known as liberal economics, whose central idea is that the state… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
“What was going on here was something Smitty had seen before: a young person’s first real farewell to the world of school and college,… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
“It seemed too as if many of the people were on display, behaving as if they expected to be looked at, as if they… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
But knowing that you had gone wrong, and knowing how you had gone wrong, were not the same thing as knowing how to put… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
Video games are the first new artistic medium since television, but they are more different from television than television was from cinema; they are… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
'Dead peasants insurance' is a term that sounds as if it comes straight out of Monty Python. If only that were true. — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
As an outsider to and observer of the restaurant business, one of the things I most admire about it is the risks people are… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
The first ATM in Hong Kong was actually at the foot of the bank. I remember my father using it. And I find it… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
Money is like poetry because both involve learning to communicate in a compressed language that packs a lot of meaning and consequence into the… — John Lanchester Copy Share Image
