Vietnam, me love you long time. All day, all night, me love you long time.

Normally, small talk is enough for me to form an opinion of someone. I make quick judgments, often completely wrong, and then stick by them rigidly.

The first I heard of the beach was in Bangkok, on the Ko Sanh Road.

My first attempt at writing was very unstructured and formless, with shifting points of view. I was trying to understand how long form might work, and I realized I had something shapeless. It was a total car wreck. But I still felt I could pull it off. So I ditched that attempt and started writing in the opposite manner, in first person, with a driving narrative.

I never feel a huge need for backstory in my novels or films. Quick sketches are often enough. When you encounter people in life - like a chance encounter at a bar or wherever you happen to be - you make these incredibly quick, quite intricate decisions about people based on very small amounts of coded information. We're good at that. Long descriptions prior to meeting someone or as you're getting to know them almost don't work.

I do all this alone, everything I achieve, I achieve alone, because it's my head I'm locked into, and I share this space with nobody but myself.

By the time the plane was airborne I'd forgotten England even existed.