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Most people I know don't even realize I'm an award-winning author, but I have gotten many opportunities to travel to places I'd never have visited otherwise.

I'll always struggle over saying I'm a writer, even if I won the Booker Prize.

I'm never going to be in danger of getting the Nobel Prize for literature.

I'm realistic about my career as a novelist. I'm certainly not a superstar and far, far from a household name, but I feel successful.

There's something very strange about associating me with that prize. I had hoped for it in a more directed way as a journalist. Somehow as a journalist you know there are Pulitzers out there and you can work hard and get one. To win it for Fiction seems unbelievable.

I judged about a zillion awards this year so I've been reading a lot of books that just came out.

What's important to me is that all of my books are in print - and, in a way, that becomes the challenge, not winning this prize or getting that review. It's that the work is there, and you can walk into many bookshops throughout the world and buy it.

Oh, what a shock. My career must be slipping. This is the first time I've been available to pick up an award.

I don't know how many bestsellers I've got, or half the awards I've won, and I don't really care. I'm just having fun, doing something I love and getting paid for it. How cool is that?

No matter how many awards you've won or how many sales you've got, come the next book it's still a blank sheet of paper and you're still panicking like hell that you've got nothing new to say.