I hope that readers will tear through my books because they can't stop themselves - and then, maybe, read them again and find new things there.

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.

Mourning Ruby is not a flat landscape: it is more like a box with pictures painted on every face. And each face is also a door which opens, I hope, to take the reader deep into the book.

As individuals, we are shaped by story from the time of birth; we are formed by what we are told by our parents, our teachers, our intimates.

I would like people to come into my Dreamworld and then choose to stay.

If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.

I concentrate on the lives of individuals whom the reader comes to know and feel with intimately.