When I reached Fort Binjemma, for example, where my grandfather was stationed for a while, the whole Victorian fort was decaying. Barbed wire surrounded it, spray paint on the ancient walls claimed it as private property, and the moat where my grandfather and his men had grown crops - in desperation as the siege's hunger bit - was completely overgrown with bushes and trees.

I'm really interested in people's decisions.

I know that the hopes of this whole human world can fit inside one soul.

I'm always determined that as a novelist I'm going to go out there and research my characters very thoroughly before I start writing.

Looking after a very sick child was the Olympics of parenting.

People wonder how they are ever going to change their lives, but really it is frighteningly easy.

We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refugees from ourselves.