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What I wanted to create with 'The Luminaries' is a book that had structural patterns built in that didn't matter, but if you cared about them, you could look into the book and see them.

Some people have theorized that I lurched to prove myself intellectually. But it was not any lurch. It was more a kind of awakening.

I wanted to portray very, very dark subject matter and a deceptively complex story in the brightest colours and simplest lines possible to leave the readers reeling.

I'm not quite sure when I began to be troubled by the creeping sense of my own ludicrousness, but it persisted - and eventually grew into a fascination. I started writing about it. Thus, in His characteristically mysterious way, the Lord made clear His plans for me.

It was the drawing that led me to architecture, the search for light and astonishing forms.

I used to think I had ambition... but now I'm not so sure. It may have been only discontent. They're easily confused.

The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

If I examine the circumstances which inspired me to write - and this is not mere self-indulgence, but a desire for accuracy - I see clearly that the starting point of it all for me was war.

I have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea.