It was the trickle of royalties from an inexplicably popular Japanese translation of my first novel which had provided me with my living for the previous few years.
'Most people have an ear for the best new bits of language they come across – a better or richer or just smarter-sounding way of expressing ideas which are anyway always slightly beyond language’s grasp.'
Morgan Meis on Guru, Jonathan Safran Foer's Tree of Codes and Jon McGregor on footnotes. Plus Adam Leith Gollner, Amber Qureshi from Fukushima, Alain de Botton and Keith Ridgway on literary agents.