I studied opera, and when I left conservatory I told myself I would never sing in public again.

I hope that the relationship of the title to the novel [ What Belongs To You] gets more complex with each section of the book: that maybe it begins by resonating with the question of prostitution - to what extent can a body be commodified, what exactly are you renting or purchasing when you pay for sex - and deepens over the course of the book to address larger questions of ownership and belonging.

There are lots of big books that have gay characters - or, more commonly, a gay character - in secondary roles, but seldom are their lives, and especially their sexual lives, on center stage.

It does seem like between the groundbreaking writing of Edmund White's generation and the work of younger gay writers in their twenties and thirties there is a kind of gap.

For me, music was always a second language. I didn't have a musical background, and I started studying very late, at fourteen.

I'm not sure any narrative model has been more important for me than Benjamin Britten's chamber operas.

Woolf is an important writer for me, someone I read often and who forms part of my ideal of what literature can do.