[Core concepts: Human beings all have souls. Souls are software objects. Software is not immortal.]

I don't keep anything on paper (except within an actual novel in progress, at which point I need a file to keep track of plot threads, characters, and so on).

We're currently living with a generation of established novelists who are embarrassingly out of date with respect to social networking, internet skills, and so on.

Time is a corrosive fluid, dissolving motivation, destroying novelty, and leaching the joy from life.

I'm told that a couple of my Russian translations are just plain terrible, though, and there may be others.

Most established novelists are writing books informed by experiences gained in their youth. Middle age is not the best time to be changing smartphones every six months or adopting new technology platforms - because we tend to get slower and less accommodating to change as we age.

I don't do football. (Grew up in Leeds in the 1970s. Football there was indellibly associated with the National Front, i.e. violent fascist skinheads.)