Writers seem to me to be people who need to retire from social life and do a lot of thinking about what's happened - almost to calm themselves.

People demand a lot of the justice system and they demand things that it can't deliver.

I like poking my nose into other people's lives.

I suppose there must be idiots who dream of signing deals with publishers while fully intending to drink martinis in cool bars or ride around on skateboards. But the actual writers I know are experts in neurotic self-torture. Every page of writing is the result of a thousand tiny decisions and desperate acts of will.

I think some people wished I'd kept myself out of the book. But I kind of insist on it because I want the reader to share my engagement with the material, if you like, not pretend that I'm doing it completely intellectually.

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.

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