Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

I like novelists who can create other interesting worlds.

Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers.

I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they'd once belonged to the sea.

The fantasy never got beyond that—I didn’t let it—and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn’t sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.

I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel you can get right inside somebody's head.

I think jogging is bad for your health. All that pressure on the knees and back cannot be good for you.