I'm one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood.

Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't.

You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it.

I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.

I was mainly in a state of nervousness while I wrote it - nervousness that it was far bigger and more complicated than anything Id attempted before, and that maybe my talent just wasnt up to it and the book would have to be abandoned, or would turn out not to work at all when it was finished.

I had no sense of any reputation that What a Carve Up! might acquire - at the time I didnt even have a publisher, so my main worry was whether it was even going to see the light of day or not.

I like the rain before it falls. of course there is no such thing, she said. That's why it's my favorite. Something can still make you happy, can't it, even if it isn't real.