We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.

My mother cranes her neck. Her ability to be fascinated by things is her best gift to me.

In contravention of my belief that any life ending in death is essentially pointless, I needed my friends to open up that plastic bag and take one last look at me. Someone had to remember me, if only for a few more minutes in the vast silent waiting room of time.

I love to act, I've always wanted to be an actor. I think that acting and fiction go nicely together - being able to visualize language as something you perform, not just something that's there on the page.

I don't have many possessions, apart from my books.

Good fiction makes me turn off all the other parts of my brain, so that I become quiet and submissive, entirely at the mercy of the work at hand.

The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.