When a book comes from the publisher and you see it for the first time... Of course it's not remotely like seeing a baby for the first time, but I can remember with each book what room I was in when I opened it. That would be excitement, though, I think. Not pride.

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

I've never put Northern Ireland into a novel because it's not my territory. I come from the South, so my imaginative territory is very much the Republic of Ireland rather than the North. Even though, if I wrote a novel about the North, it might sell more.

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

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

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

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.'