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

I think you can get a sort of intensity and an edginess offering nine stories in a book. Competing versions of things.

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.

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.

Life has a funny way of becoming ordinary as soon as it can.

I do not know why it matters that I should tell the truth to myself at night, why it should matter that the truth should be spoken at least once in the world. Because the world is a place of silence, the sky at night when the birds have gone is a vast silent place. Words will make the slightest difference to the sky at night. They will not brighten it or make it less strange. And the day too has its own deep indifference to anything that is said.

Some of our loves and attachments are elemental and beyond our choosing, and for that very reason they come spiced with pain and regret and need and hollowness and a feeling as close to anger as I will ever be able to manage.