I would never really analyse what I do. I leave that to other people - I'm not a critic. I just want to get on with whatever I have in hand, you know? Just try to make the best job of the available material.

A lot of the fiction I read growing up was post-war American, and not all of it centers on Manhattan, but around people of the Mad Men generation, people like John Cheever and, in more modern times, Don DeLillo, who I always mention.

I'm organised in some ways, but not in others.

I was fat! I was pustule-rich! I looked like a pink human grenade! When did I blossom into the irresistible little orchid that I am now? I don't know. Getting taller helps. It spreads out a bit.

There's always a host of voices you're inspired by. I love Don DeLillo, and I love Isaac Bashevis Singer, and I love Beckett, and I love Pinter. He's one of the funniest voices in English literature since Dickens.

You're never going to go. Why would you go? It's a disgusting place. It's always wet even when it's dry. There's nothing there. Farmers aren't really people, you know this. They're just necessary, we need somebody to kill cows.

People will kill you over time, and how they'll kill you is with tiny, harmless phrases, like 'be realistic.'