Ordinary professionalism and 20 years' experience can accomplish a lot, but it can't access the hidden places.

If we make anything that lasts, it outlives us.

It's great to win a few prizes early on. It helps a writer to get noticed and to get some sales. It can also be a pain in the arse because it gets in the way of the quiet, contemplative time every writer needs, but which is particularly important when you are a new writer finding your own voice, and pursuing the things that interest you.

Working-class families in the north of England used to hear the 1611 Bible regularly at church and at home ... for us, the language didn't seem too difficult. I especially liked 'the quick and the dead' - you really get a feel for the difference if you live in a house with mice and a mousetrap.

You know every cell in our bodies is completely renewed every seven years, so how can we talk about being the same person? We're absolutely not.

Life is fragmentary, and the pattern that creativity can offer is not one that is imposed, not something rigid, but rather something which can reveal the intrinsic patterns of that fragmentation. Things are in a perpetual dance, but there is an order. It's not really random at all.

She hated being a nobody and like all children, adopted or not, I have had to live out some of her unlived life. We do that for our parents - we don't really have any choice.