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

I can remember being in my pram: children stayed in their prams much longer then than they do now. A big bouncy pram with black covers and a hood with metal clips that could trap your fingers. I was looking up at my sister who was sitting on the pram seat, with her back to me.

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.

The human longing for story is so powerful, so primitive, that it seems like something not learned, but locked into our genes.

Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.

However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.

We are creatures of story.