Don DeLillo on "The Silence"

From the Grauniad: "There were many distractions. But I’m also much slower. I’m not older and wiser. I’m just older and slower... I was on a plane from Paris, and it was unusual – at least for me. There were overhead screens below the luggage bins, and for most of the flight I sat there looking at them. I found myself taking out an old notebook that I carry with me, and noting details, writing in the language in which the words appeared on screen: outside air temperature, time in New York, arrival time, speed, time to destination, and so forth. I looked at this notebook when I got home, and I began to think in terms of what became the book’s first chapter. The other important element was a volume I’ve had for some time: the 1912 manuscript of the special theory of relativity by Albert Einstein. It’s an oversized book, and much of it is too technical for me. But I read what I could comprehend in the English translation, and then I began looking at other volumes concerning Einstein’s life and work – and I found he was entering the narrative. He was beginning to occupy my mind. Both these things accompanied me into 'The Silence'... Time is a powerful matter."