Charles Dickens was an avid seeker of names - he read directories and looked for odd names on gravestones.

I have reared, or helped to rear, five children and the scariest bit, bar none, is the learning to drive part. It has filled me with anxiety not only about the children, but also about my former self and my friends.

Like most of the educated, I do harbor a fondness for the sins of my ignorant past.

A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.

When 'The Awakening' was published it was considered so scandalous it was banned in the author's home-town library, and she herself was barred from the Fine Arts Club in the same city. What the novel has to offer, among other things, is honesty.

My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that's basically a conservative view of life.

An urban novelist never minds a little decay.