Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are.

Ah, well, I have no talent for nonfiction, that's my problem.

It seems to me that you would have to write a novel on a very small, intimate scale for it not to become political.

The plain fact is that she never really liked me, and never wanted me. I had been a mistake; and that, to some extent, is what I remain in my own eyes, to this day. The knowledge never goes, can never be undone. You just have to find a way to live with it.

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.

But you can try to read books at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons.

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.