I don't think it is an easy thing to write and expect to be commercial, even if you are from Venus and a hermaphrodite.

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.

It's a terrible poison, writing.

I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the second world war.

I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not.

They took to silence. They touched each other without comment and without progression. A hand on a hand, a clothed arm, resting on an arm. An ankle overlapping an ankle, as they sat on a beach, and not removed. One night they fell asleep, side by side... He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase.