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.

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.

I always thought it better to allow myself to doubt before I decided, than to expose myself to the misery, after I had decided, of doubting whether I had decided rightly and justly.

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.

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

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.

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.