John Lanchester

“It’s as if people used the invention”

— John Lanchester

The standard personality type for a writer is a shy megalomaniac.

— John Lanchester

“Mere adequacy is never adequate.”

— John Lanchester

The truth is, it is hard to know where ideas come from.

— John Lanchester

Fact doesn't have to be plausible; it just has to be fact.

— John Lanchester

Some things get clearer as you look back on them.

— John Lanchester

Sometimes, the only way of doing something is to do it.

— John Lanchester

“It's not the fault of ghosts that we are so frightened of them.”

— John Lanchester

“It’s that great British middle-class battle cry: “Something must be done!”

— John Lanchester

There's an awful lot of us who don't quite speak finance, speak money.

— John Lanchester

“Roger was not personally ambitious; he mainly wanted life not to make too many demands on him.”

— John Lanchester

We wouldn't care so much what people thought of us if we knew how seldom they did.

— John Lanchester

Dad was a very, very principled man, and he hated any kind of story where the baddies get away with it.

— John Lanchester

In the U.S., it is a crime to lie to a federal agent, and it's often this that sends people to jail…

— John Lanchester

Germany has to put the broader European interest on the same level as its own national interest, or the euro is toast.

— John Lanchester

I remember, the first few years here, I didn't like London much: too big, too crowded, the physical difficulty of getting around.

— John Lanchester

It seems to me obviously axiomatic that markets are not magical, that they're organised in a range of regulated entities created by…

— John Lanchester

“A solicitor had looked up at the sky, swept blue by the wind, and had a sudden sense of religious consolation, a…

— John Lanchester

“I myself have always disliked being called a "genius." It is fascinating to notice how quick people have been to intuit this…

— John Lanchester

“Shahid was the free spirit of the Kamal family: a dreamer, an idealist, a wanderer on the face of the earth--or, as…

— John Lanchester

Rising inequality is not a law of nature - it's not even a law of economics. It is a consequence of political…

— John Lanchester

Once you learn to 'speak' money - which is what I felt I did through the research that led me to write…

— John Lanchester

You heard people say forty was the new thirty and fifty was the new forty and sixty was the new forty-five, but…

— John Lanchester

For a while, I had a rule of no smartphone in bed, but now I've upgraded to no smartphone in the bedroom.…

— John Lanchester

“Petunia only ever went to the doctor reluctantly, and her motive in doing so was always the same: she did it in…

— John Lanchester

“The economic metaphor came to be applied to every aspect of modern life, especially the areas where it simply didn't belong. In…

— John Lanchester

Richness, the ideas of having plenty of money, is not ... an absolute state. Richness is about the amount of money you…

— John Lanchester

When I first travelled to New York in 1982 on a summer holiday as a student, I remember thinking how exciting it…

— John Lanchester

It doesn't thrill me to bits that the state has to use the tools of electronic surveillance to keep us safe, but…

— John Lanchester

“Bastiat (1801–1850) was a strikingly clear-minded early advocate of what came to be known as liberal economics, whose central idea is that…

— John Lanchester

“It's always the next pay raise, the next purchase, the next place you move to or go on holiday which will make…

— John Lanchester

“No, Roger had not seen the funny side. But there had been a moment when, after looking at his watch, he had…

— John Lanchester

“The idea of luxury, even the word "luxury," was important to Arabella. Luxury meant something that was by definition overpriced, but was…

— John Lanchester

“That was the main thing wrong with Mrs. Kamal. She spent such an extraordinary amount of mental energy feeling irritated that it…

— John Lanchester

“We fight for autonomy over so many areas of our lives - for decency and democracy and freedom, for suffrage, for the…

— John Lanchester

“It seemed too as if many of the people were on display, behaving as if they expected to be looked at, as…

— John Lanchester

“But the thing which had made him fall for her, fall properly, was the way she seemed so calm and so quiet…

— John Lanchester

“What was going on here was something Smitty had seen before: a young person’s first real farewell to the world of school…

— John Lanchester

“of seatbelts as an opportunity to take up drunk-driving.”

— John Lanchester

By the time I was three years old, I'd lived at 10 different addresses in six different countries.

— John Lanchester