I always wanted to work at Take A Break magazine, you know, just to inject a little bit of politics into their stories. I applied for a job there after I'd done my law degree and didn't even get an interview. I only wrote Garnethill because I didn't get that job!

Usually when I'm trying to establish character, I try and find out where they live.

People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries.

There's always these giant baffling books, like 'The Da Vinci Code.' People say it's not as well written as 'Midnight's Children.' Why aren't people reading 'Midnight's Children?' Nobody knows why these phenomenons happen but they're great.

In prose, leaps of logic can be made while the protagonist thinks about things and arrives at conclusions. Even with voiceover, there's no real way of having an inner voice without it taking over the entire story.

A man who thinks he has a higher purpose can do terrible things, even to those he professes to love.

Novelisation doesn't imply the truth. Readers are sophisticated enough to know that.