A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.

I was always influenced by language.

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.

The poets whom I knew then were all men and all seemed dauntingly sure of themselves - although I am sure that really they were as uncertain as I was.

It is a violation which has obsessed the tyrants of the twentieth century. They do not want simply to kill their opponents, but to liquidate them, to deny that they have ever existed.

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.

We are creatures of story.