When I work I have a sculptor's sense of the shape of the words I'm making. I use a machine with larger than average letters: the bigger the better.

We live in an age of rapid mass media, television, Internet. They determine our tempo, not books.

It's true that some of us become better writers by living long enough. But this is also how we become worse writers. The trick is to die in between.

I think my work is influenced by the fact that we're living in dangerous times. If I could put it in a sentence, in fact, my work is about just that: living in dangerous times.

There were moments when she wasn't talking so much as fading into time, dropping back into some funnelled stretch of recent past.

There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down.

The question of dying becomes a wise reminder. It cures us of our innocence of the future.