When I started writing at 18 or 19, I had a fear of anything autobiographical, but I've come to realise that my writing is very autobiographical at the emotional level.

I always, at least back then, struggled with emotion in writing. I felt like I could do odd, unusual things, but there wouldn't be enough feeling in them, and maybe if there's a progression at all to anything that I've done it's that I've always wanted to have a high - an almost overwhelming - degree of feeling in what I write.

Fiction becomes a place where I face certain fears such as losing language or losing my children.

My parents showed me by example that they could balance their work and family lives.

With students, one is often in the position where you have to be authoritative about what they're doing and connected to some principle. I prefer not really knowing the answer to anything interesting and I try to encourage that in teaching. If I start to feel certain about something my curiosity goes away, my mind shuts down. I'm sure that's not always true, it's stupid to generalise.

I work, and then I leave the office, and I'm with my kids and just sort of enjoy them on a visceral level, and I don't feel like I'm exorcising my own deep ideas about parenthood and about how my life will come into play in my work.

Teaching is all armchair. I learn about writing by writing and thinking about what I've written and throwing it away.