By removing the stories from the morass of things that surround us, I'm hoping to achieve some kind of purer approach to emotional life.

Consensual reality is both fragile and elastic, and it heals like the skin of a bubble.

Novelists get to direct the perfect films. We get to cast every part. We dress the set exactly as we wish.

I never take any notes or draw charts or make elaborate diagrams, but I hold an image of the shape of a book in my head and work from that mental hologram.

The past is still visible. The buildings haven't changed, the layout of the streets hasn't changed. So memory is very available to me as I walk around.

Teenage life - possibly adult life too is all about what you want and can’t have. And then about what you receive and misuse.

I want to write books that can be read a hundred years from now, and readers wouldn't be bogged down by irrelevant details.