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.

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.

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

I have a backlog of novels which I would love to be working on and would be working on if I were not obliged to hold down a full time job.

It seems we are capable of immense love and loyalty, and as capable of deceit and atrocity. It's probably this shocking ambivalence that makes us unique.

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

It's always better if you're next door. Ideas come up at the oddest times. They don't always come up in a conference call.