When I try to understand somebody, create a character, I fall into them. When I think writers are telling me what to think, I get harrumphy.

There's an explosion of Indian fiction of all kinds, from military thrillers to chicklit. I think that's exciting.

I'm fascinated by the emergence of a global class. They're highly mobile; they reject the idea of place.

As I got older I became a kind of sub cultural junkie, foraging around in music, street fashion and eventually art, politics and the freakier reaches of the Internet, hunting the next discovery, the next seam of underground gold.

In my early teens, science fiction and fantasy had an almost-total hold over my imagination. Their outcast status was part of their appeal.

Suburbia is all about private ownership and not having to share, and it leads to a paranoid, defensive mindset. I know this, having grown up in Essex.

There's nothing New York likes more than a thing. Or a place. Or a place that's a thing. Or a thing that happens to be a place.