I work at the sentences. Many of the things people find distinctive about my writing, I think of as natural.

I love the characters not knowing everything and the reader knowing more than them. There's more mischief in that and more room for seriousness, too.

I am a trembling mess from hip to knee. There is a terrible heat, a looseness in my innards that makes me want to dig my fists between my thighs. It is a confusing feeling - somewhere between diarrhoea and sex - this grief that is almost genital.

I am interested in levels of brain discourse. How articulate are the voices in your head? You know, there's a different voice for the phone, and a different voice if you're talking in bed. When you're starting off with a narrator, it's interesting to think, where is their voice coming from, what part of their brain?

We have lost the art of public tenderness, these small gestures of wiping and washing; we have forgotten how abjectly the body welcomes a formal touch.

I have no place left to live but in my own heart.

Only bad writers think that their work is really good.