The fictional treatment of biographical material - a treatment that for me is essential - is full of traps.

I think our sexuality is all yet to be recounted and that the rich male literary tradition constitutes a huge obstacle.

Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing.

The circle of an empty day is brutal and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose

He was going through one of those moments that you read about in books, when a character reacts in an unexpectedly extreme way to the normal discontents of living.

Those who write need that "willing suspension of disbelief ", as Coleridge called it.

Climbing the economic ladder has been very hard for me; I still feel a great deal of guilt towards those I left behind.