The older I get, the more I seek to use a plain prose style, concentrating more on story.

I got to see first hand what he has done to make this a reality. That has been real rewarding to watch him achieve his dream.

I don't see myself as experimenting in any conscious way, it's perhaps that certain books require different densities of language.

It's basically a home-rule issue. I think the governing authority that appoints people as assessors certainly has reasons for doing it. ... And it certainly ought to be the board of assessors' right to say who is best qualified to serve as an appraiser.

My work is known by too few people for me to be remembered as a writer - that is, beyond those dedicated souls (bless them) who have followed the oeuvre through its various stages. To be realistic, when they and the last of my friends have died, I doubt I shall be remembered at all.

When you commit a serious doping offence you are not eligible for lottery funding.

The true experimenters are there but no-one hears about them - the critical/review system tends to concentrate on the handful of 'major' writers and their promising successors; bookshops tend not to sell them; publishers don't promote them. It's the same fate as has befallen poetry.