Personally, I like the social novel. I like writing that gets in and under the hood and looks about - at what's going on. But I don't say to any writer that that's absolutely what they should do.

Ultimately, you can only ever write what you know. It's logically and philosophically impossible to write what you don't know.

I write about what I know; and I write about things that are new to me, and that I didn't know before.

No shame in saying that I felt a loneliness drifting through me. Funny how it was, everyone perched in their own little world with the deep need to talk, each person with their own tale, beginning in some strange middle point, then trying so hard to tell it all, to have it all make sense, logical and final.

People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time- but even on the best day nobody's perfect.

Cynicism is easy. An optimist is a braver cynic.

A lot of people think that writers are much cleverer than they actually are. No, they're not. But they're emotionally clever, and they go into a character, and they feel something that they weren't entirely aware of beforehand.