Like? I have no soft spot, fondness, admiration, respect, attraction, or esteem for death. I am not taken with it or infatuated by it. I carry no torch, have no crush, take no shine to the word or action of death. I don’t have the hots for it, and I don’t dig it, either.

Showing off onstage, with everyone laughing and applauding.

In my bed at home at a ripe old age with the knowledge that my children, and grandchildren if I have any, are thriving, happy, and provided for.

How doesn’t matter—it’s when that matters. When I’m ready!

Sitting down to a leisurely conversation in an English tearoom with my wife, a friend, or even an interesting stranger. Good cake is essential.

The urge to be unpleasant to waitstaff in restaurants.

I always suspected that she was the biggest influence on me. It seems unlikely, but I always suspected that. I used to say that in interviews, and people would think I was just being smart and evasive. But I reread Jane Eyre recently, and also Villette , her other great novel. I just came across episode after episode where I thought “Oh my goodness, I just ripped that off from this book!” Perhaps you wouldn’t recognize it, but I did. Certain kinds of techniques, certain moments when you understand that the narrator is crying, not because she tells you, but because somebody watching her makes a remark. All these little things that I thought, “Oh, I used that in that book,” or “Oh, that trick.” I think Charlotte Brontë had an enormous influence on me, and I think it’s something to do with that use of first-person and the evasiveness, the indirectness, of her first-person narrative. I mean this phrase, “the unreliable narrator,” has become very popular in creative writing. So it’s not quite that, but a very subtle use of the relationship between the writer and the book and the reader — something I tuned in on, I homed in on instantly, when I started to read Charlotte Brontë. But I’ll tell you, my favorite author — novelist — is somebody who you probably wouldn’t think had any relationship to me, which is Dostoyevsky. I’ve always loved Dostoyevsky, ever since I first read him. I think he’s one of the reasons I started to read, you know, when I read Crime and Punishment when I was about 17 or 18. Dostoyevsky and Chekhov for me remain like two poles in terms of a way to approach things. I love the messiness of Dostoyevsky, the improvised — I mean a lot of it is a mess, but I like the way that strange, unexpected things have obviously come tumbling out of him that he didn’t want to necessarily have come tumbling out. On the other hand, you know, Chekhov, another great Russian writer, exemplifies the calm, controlled, very carefully structured, understated kind of work. I aspire to them both. They’re two of my great heroes.

It’s funny you say that because I never have this moment when I feel, “Ah, I’ve finished!” I watch footballers at the end of the match, you know, the whistle goes and they’ve won or lost. Until then they’ve been giving everything and at that moment they know it’s over. It’s funny for an author. There’s never a finishing whistle. It’s not very spectacular.

Actually, I had done what I thought was more or less a finished version of The Remains of the Day , but the very buttoned-up narrator, the butler — in that earlier version, he doesn’t quite come through confessing his true emotions. He maintains his front a little bit more effectively than he does in the final version. What made me change my mind was that, between that penultimate version and the final version I handed in, I listened to a song by Tom Waits — another great singer-songwriter, remarkable artist. And this is the power of that art form: it’s performance as well as the actual writing.

I always dreamt of having a second stomach I could carry around in a bag, which I could attach to my real stomach when I sat down in restaurants. That way, I could eat a huge amount, never gaining weight.