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" We can all instinctively understand the idea of life insurance; most of us will feel an instinctive repugnance at the thought of the viatical industry, or 'dead peasants insurance.' As market thinking penetrated the life insurance industry, a moral line was crossed, and the application of market ideas was taken too far. "

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" During the 20th century, the greatest danger to European stability was Germany's sense of its special destiny. During the 21st century, the greatest danger to European stability is Germany's reluctance to accept its special destiny. "

John Lanchester

Special

Sense

" In a democracy, people tend to get the kind of government they deserve. "

" Some things get clearer as you look back on them. "

" It would be too glib, not a hundred per cent true, to say that my father's career as a banker was what made me a writer. But it would be slightly true, and it was certainly the case that his work as a banker made me see that the trade-offs people make between their work and their lives are often badly skewed. "

John Lanchester

Father

Career

" The 'stuff' in novels touches on every aspect of the world and people's lives. That's what makes it so remarkable just how little there is in the novel about the world of money. "

" Why should the idea of Western liberal democracy automatically imply unregulated free-market capitalism? "

" The early-'80s recession was good for good restaurants, not least because it put bad ones out of business. "

" For a while, I had a rule of no smartphone in bed, but now I've upgraded to no smartphone in the bedroom. The fact that we need rules shows how much these things have invaded our lives. "

" The economics of setting up a new restaurant are scary in good times and terrifying in bad ones. "

" Fact doesn't have to be plausible; it just has to be fact. "

" As an outsider to and observer of the restaurant business, one of the things I most admire about it is the risks people are willing to take. "

" I have sane friends, solvent friends, foodie friends, and friends who can take time off in the week, but I don't know one single person who ticks all those boxes. "

" A preoccupation with money and, especially, with what money meant was, in our family, an inherited thing. My father's father, Jack, who died before I was born, was very much possessed by the idea that money was freedom. "

" I think the Internet was invented specifically to stop people finishing their books. And it does quite a good job. I don't have blocking software, though I could easily imagine needing it. I just don't do that stuff until I've got the words done for the day. "

" Security is a complicated idea and one with an immense potential to trap us - that was one lesson I learnt from my father. "

" 'Community,' that loaded word so beloved of politicians, is simply not a reality in most people's lives. It's normal for us to be cut off from each other. "

" Hospitality is central to the restaurant business, yet it's a hard idea to define precisely. Mostly, it involves being nice to people and making them feel welcome. You notice it when it's there, and you particularly notice it when it isn't. A single significant lapse in this area can be your dominant impression of an entire meal. "

" I do believe in that thing about the reading audience being very important to the formation of the novel at its birth. "

" 'Austerity' is a real weasel word because it's an attempt to make something value-based and abstract out of something which, in reality, consists simply of spending cuts. "

" The Internet makes writing about restaurants easier and more interesting in quite a few ways, one of the main ones being to do with the mundane business of checking what's on the menu. "

" I grew up abroad, and when I first passed through London in the 1970s, it seemed a drab and provincial place. "

John Lanchester

Through

Place

" Once I've properly finished a book, my ideal state of being would be to never think about it again. But with 'Capital,' I felt I'd spent so much time with the characters that they were very, very real, and I definitely had a sense of loss about leaving them behind in a way I've not quite had before. "

" At the risk of being old-fartish, I like old-school wines that taste the way the winemaker intended, as opposed to organic and untreated ones with more bottle variation. If I want to take a risk, I'll go bungee-jumping. "

John Lanchester

Way

Taste

" I think smartphones are one of humanity's most remarkable creations: computers are amazing enough, but a supercomputer you can carry in your pocket and communicate instantly with anyone, anywhere... it's no wonder they're troublingly addictive. "

" Photography brought a lot to painting because it forced artists to think about what painting could do that photography couldn't. "

" Chefs get sucked into the trap of 'fine dining' because some guides make it central to their ratings system and because some customers have been trained to focus their expectations on the trappings and not on the food. It's all a gigantic waste of energy. "

" There's an awful lot of us who don't quite speak finance, speak money. "

John Lanchester

Money

Who

" Video games are the first new artistic medium since television, but they are more different from television than television was from cinema; they are the newest new thing since the arrival of the movies just over a century ago. "

" I remember, the first few years here, I didn't like London much: too big, too crowded, the physical difficulty of getting around. "

" I don't answer the phone or do my email; I don't do anything until I've got the day's writing done. I have a word count for every day: 500 for fiction, 1,000 for non-fiction, and journalism is 1,500. That's a level I can sustain. "