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.

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

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

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

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

The Roman Catholic Church and its rituals were so much part of life that, although my parents would often question a small matter of dogma and none of us seemed more religious than anyone else, no one ever questioned the rituals or the basic tenets of belief.

“One Minus One’”and “Barcelona, 1975” are more or less autobiographical.