It’s called mind over matter. If we don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” When a bit of me hurts, I always mind.

If you have written something that the film people want, like a book, it does give you a way in.

Vitamins are medicine for not getting sick and going back to Heaven yet.

When I was four I thought everything in TV was just TV, then I was five and Ma unlied about lots of it being pictures of real and Outside being totally real. Now I’m in Outside but it turns out lots of it isn’t real at all.

The Collector [John Fowles book] does such a good job of capturing the mindset of a capturer, and also that's become a banal trope of every second crime novel: the weirdo, fetishistic watcher/stalker/kidnapper/kidnapper of women or children.

Identity politics are wearisome; you don't want to go on speaking for any one group as a writer.

So much as I enjoy big novels of epic sweep, I often find, say, if they follow several generations, by the third generation, I'm not caring about the people anymore.