If you want to be a good lair, tell people what they want to hear. (From Hot dogs under The Dakota)

That's all it's meant to be, ... This is not a literary fiction. This is page-turning fiction that you take to the beach and read for diversion. If I do that, I've done my job.

There was something distinctly American about it all, a fundamental difference in perspective and place–in how they saw themselves in the world. And this was what made it so American–not that they felt compassion for mistreated workers three continents away, workers they had never seen or known, whose world they could not begin to understand, not that they felt guilty about their privilege, no,no not that either, but that they felt the need to do something. That they felt they had to power to do something about it. That was what made it so American. That they felt they had the power to do something–they assumed they had that power. They had been born with it–the ability to change the world–and had never questioned its existence, an assumption so massive as to remain unseen. The power and the responsibility to protect the people they imagined as powerless. The poor defenseless people of the Third World.

He felts a sudden queasy sadness. What if they knew what a real revolutionary was? How bloody a real revolution. He looked around, suddenly feeling the need to sit, and saw nothing but their faces, their round wet faces staring back at him.

What a violence of spirit not to know the world.

Darkness crept through. Shadows pried at doors, teased dull edges of recollections that never quite took hold. Memories that would have shriveled under the blinding sun of daylight. And reason.

Ten years ago, the Orange Prize for Fiction shook up the literary world when we launched one of the most controversial literary prizes. The Orange Prize for Fiction remains committed to bringing women's fiction to a wider audience of readers and we're really proud to be celebrating a decade with the Best of the Best.

My view is that popular fiction as it existed was just plain dumb, and literary fiction was either abstruse, or unbelievably boring.