(although anyone with half a brain must surely be mired in existential gloom all the time)

Probably not needing to be published would give me more time to think about a book.

She was a terrible mother, there was no doubt about it, but she didn't even have the strength to feel guilty.

My father was an autodidact. It wasn't a middle-class house. Shopkeepers are aspirant. He paid for me to go to private school. He was denied an education - he had a horrible childhood. He got a place at a grammar school and wasn't allowed to go.

The great thing about writing compared to life is getting to tie things up.

I have been to the world's end and back and now I know what I would put in my bottom drawer .I would put my sisters.

It's been said that the men in my books have been absent, or weak, or creepy.