I'm really not responsible for what mental operation people have when they're reading my books other than the ones which are created by literary effects.

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.

The whole Melrose series is an attempt to tell the truth, and is based on the idea that there is some salutary or liberating power in telling the truth.

No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too big if it's cherished.

It seems people spend the majority of their lives believing they're dying, with the only consolation being that at one point they get to be right.

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.