I live in words. I like looking at things, but I don't have a strong visual imagination.

Anyone who works in the arts knows, if you're writing a novel or a play or anything, you have to be ready for someone to say, 'Your time is up.'

Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's a pleasure.

Three of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I was brought up in a house of women.

It really matters to writers to find and treasure readers, all the more when they're on the other side of the world.

Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.

in skies of deepening blue the moon, heaven's queen was now afloat