My heroes and heroines are often unlikely people who are dragged into situations without meaning to become involved, or people with a past that has never quite left them. They are often isolated, introspective people, often confrontational or anarchic in some way, often damaged or secretly unhappy or incomplete.

I've never been very good at leaving things behind. I tried, but I have always left fragments of myself there too, like seeds awaiting their chance to grow.

I'm politically inclined towards the left, but I don't like to be in anyone's gang; I'm a bit of a loose cannon.

If you can still write in spite of the fact that you're not getting paid, that nobody cares about what you're writing, that nobody wants to publish it, that everybody is telling you to do something else, and you still want to and you still enjoy it and you can't stop doing it...then you're a writer.

If you want something you can have it, but you have to do some work. It's the ethic my mother brought me up with.

I love it when my books cause controversy, when people argue violently about the ending.

The dead know everything but they don't give a damn.