"My ideal state as a reader when I'm reading other people is feeling I'm vaguely wasting my time when I'm not reading that novel."

Ian McEwan on the feeling the writer should create in the reader.

Also, on what makes him able to write: "I suppose it just so happens that the woman I love happens to be my wife, and that is a piece of luck. That creates a sort of stability and a sort of endless interest. I know there are other writers who need the kind of spur of unhappiness to work, but not me. When I'm unhappy I can't work."

ADDED: (Via reader email.) "This is the nature of empathy, to think oneself into the minds of others. These are the mechanics of compassion: you are under the bedclothes, unable to sleep, and you are crouching in the brushed-steel lavatory at the rear of the plane, whispering a final message to your loved one. There is only that one thing to say, and you say it. All else is pointless."