The thing about the 'Melrose' novels is that I have to feel they're impossible when I set out.

I'm not trying to uncover the facts of my life but to discover the dramatic truth of the situations I was in.

It's no use imagining that bringing great writers together inevitably precipitates great conversation.

Proust is a hero of mine. I read 'A la recherche' in one go, and I'm a very slow reader. It had an astonishing impact, reading it on my own and being my main company. I think Proust is the most intelligent person to ever have written a novel.

Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn't have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over.

I think that some laughter comes from escaped horror, doesn't it?

Everything was usual. That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself.