Between the ages of 8 and 12 it was difficult to know what my father was saying, and he moved very slowly, and then he died.

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 am violently untidy. My desk is overcrowded. I write my first drafts in longhand in a long notebook using a plastic throwaway fountain pen. Then I work on a word processor using a different desk and a different room.

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.

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.

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

I suppose one should have an integrated personality, but I've never really seen the point.