It's a terrific privilege to be able to see into somebody else's life.

Now, I - for several years while I was researching this book, I felt quite obsessed by thoughts about sentencing, punishment, how judges arrive at their decisions.

That's one of the things I hope that the book can do, is to restore some dignity to Joe Cinque.

I think writers are very anxious.

But I can't bear it when somebody who some man made a pass at - to call that violence seems to me absurd and insulting to women who've really met violence, who've been raped or bashed.

It's a terrific privilege to be able to see into somebody else's life.

At the time it seemed like a natural development of my interest in what was going on around me in society.