My father is from Newark in Nottinghamshire and my mother is from the very north of Ireland. They've ended up in Scotland, where my father - well, both of them - will always be seen as having come from somewhere else.

Every great narrative is at least two narratives, if not more - the thing that is on the surface and then the things underneath which are invisible.

I went to the top of Vesuvius and looked in.

I was at the tail end of the family. The next brother along was already seven years older than me. I remember growing up by myself, playing games by myself.

Stella Duffy is a writer who never lets you down.

I'm blessed in my good friends, and some of them happen to be writers, though that's almost never what our friendships are about. And every writer I've ever read, living or dead, has in one way or another helped and inspired. I have a feeling it's important not to mix the two up.

I don't want a tombstone. You could carve on it 'She never actually wanted a tombstone.'