Edward St Aubyn

Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn't have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over.

The Booker 2011 is of no more interest to me than the world heavyweight championship, which I'm not going to win either. It's irrelevant.

Proust is a hero of mine. I read 'A la recherche' in one go, and I'm a very slow reader. It had an astonishing impact, reading it on my own and being my main company. I think Proust is the most intelligent person to ever have written a novel.

The first book I fell in love with was 'Little Toot,' the story of an adorable tugboat operating out of New York Harbor.

I'm not trying to uncover the facts of my life but to discover the dramatic truth of the situations I was in.

Well, the attractive thing about the subject of happiness is that it is notoriously difficult to write.

I see the author as the person who has written; the writer, the one involved in the process of writing. And they're not necessarily friends. The writer is the one I want to reinforce; the author would just feed on the reviews - so I'm in favour of starving him.