This is the price you pay for having a great father. You get the wonder, the joy, the tender moments - and you get the tears at the end, too.

I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.

I don't find any real rivalries with crime and thriller writers anyway. That might sound a little Pollyanna, but for the most part the writers I compete with, if you want to use that word, it's a pretty friendly rivalry. I think we all realise that the boat rises and sinks together.

I'm not very happy idle. There's always this voice in my head that says, 'I should be writing.

There is a certain fate to the universe and a certain randomness.

You bring your own weather to the picnic.

The most annoying and full- of- crap thing a writer says is, I write only for myself, I don't care if anyone reads it. A writer without a reader doesn't exist.