There is much to be said for solitude.

We can rarely tell others what we really think about them--not just because it would so wound them, but also because it would so wound ourselves.

There were moments when I felt seriously unhinged; when I was convinced that I would never, ever recover from what had happened, when it was absolutely clear to me that life from this point on would be constant agony.

With a novel, no matter where I am in it, I'm fretting about it. Every time I write a book, it starts with great forward momentum. Then there seems to be a period where it slows down a bit, and other things intervene. Then I gain momentum.

Success is a very fragile veneer. I get wary of people who embrace celebrity. It ruins people.

But what we can never do is change the story that has made us what we are. It's a story completely dictated by the accumulation of life's manifold complexities—its capacity for astonishment and horror, for sanguinity and hopelessness, for pellucid light and the most profound darkness. We are what has happened to us.

The decision to write full time was made when I was twenty-eight years old and had just had two small plays accepted for BBC Radio.