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

I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it. Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book

...and it strikes her, as she walks, that borders, like hatred, are exaggerated precisely because otherwise they would cease to exist altogether.

Increasingly I think of myself as some strange and solitary conductor, introduced to a group of very dynamic musicians who happen to be my characters, and I have no idea how they are going to play together, and I have certainly no idea how I am going to put manners on them.

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.

I love short stories. They're like small imploding universes. They are very tightly bound and controlled. I'd been wanting to write one for ages but just got tangled up in novels. The novel is the same in the sense that it is also a universe, but it explodes outwards with all that shrapnel going in several different directions. I don't see too much difference in the forms except for the fact that writing short stories is like sprinting rather than long-distance running.

Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you can get the language right.