I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert's and Beethoven's chamber music and Sibelius' symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner.

John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things.

If you have to read to cheer yourself up, read biographies of writers who went insane.

You create a world away from home and make new rooms for yourself. But when you arrive back home in your old rooms, the world you've made for yourself ceases to be real. Everything seems to crumble. Anyone who's been sent away to boarding school can understand that.

Writer's block! It doesn't exist. You just long for ideas to go away so you have an idea of peace.

I work very deliberately, with a plan. But sometimes I come to a point that I planned as the end and it needs softening. Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep - it can't be done abruptly.

All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much.