It turns up the heat under a narrative when you limit the characters in their movements or their freedoms.

I was not exploiting any real individual's story in writing ROOM, of course I was aware that my novel, by commenting on such situations, would run the risk of falling into those traps of voyeurism, sensationalism and sentimentality.

I've been writing full-time since I was 23.

My mother was wonderfully out about her dementia. She would sort of - she would say to me, I came out to the window cleaner about having dementia. You know, I love the way that verb for coming out of the closet has now become so socially useful for all sorts of situations, like when you need to explain to the window cleaner that you don't know if you paid him or not.

People are locked up in all sorts of ways.

I think I know what it's like to have a family that the outside world sees as peculiar or lacking.

I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened.