These days - with the decline of the traditional churches - I'm concerned about where we obtain some form of moral direction.

If I had the luxury of working as a full time writer, I think you would see novels appearing on a much more regular, and frequent, basis.

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.

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.

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

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.