I discovered that my imagination came alive when I moved away from the immediate world around me.

The reason I wouldn't dare to write a Western is simply because that seems to be so much a part of American culture. Maybe if I want to write a Western enough I should try to overcome that fear, but I'll certainly feel like I'm trespassing. I feel that that is so much a part of American foundation myth, it's part of the myth of America, the American vision of what America is, which people have glorified and then challenged and then vilified.

The book was at a reasonably high position on the New York Times... before I was in the country. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if my presence here would push it up or down.

Now when I look back to the Guildford of that time it seems far more exotic to me than Nagasaki.

I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographical or experimental stuff.

There's still a part of me that thinks I have to write a really good novel. I'm not trying to say I'm not happy with the novels I've written in the past. But it always feels to me like there's another one that I have to write that will really say what I want to say, and really paint this world that I can see hazily in my head.

Throughout my career I've struggled to encourage people to read my books on a more metaphorical level. I'm less attached to my settings than, for example, Saul Bellow. The setting of a novel for me is just a part of the technique. I choose it at the end.