Even if people do wrong, we're social animals, so what can we do about stopping them doing the same things in future? Saying people are 'bad' or 'evil' is just an unwillingness to engage; an unwillingness to try to empathise. That sanctimonious attitude doesn't help anyone

I'd read so much right-wing crime fiction where they find the evidence and shoot the bad guy - I thought there must be another approach.

I hate it when I'm reading a comic, and the dialogue looks like stickers stuck on top to explain what's going on. For me the best is when your eye goes in a certain point and moves through the composition and then springs out on the dialogue, or gets confused in the image and then goes to the dialogue for an explanation.

I think the negative traits are what makes us love other human beings, the foibles and the flaws.

Most of the people who write to me are really clever, really engaged. They just want to say that they have read my book and liked it.

I think graphic novels are closer to prose than film, which is a really different form.

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