She always wanted to believe in things.

Typically in my novels the narrator tells a story by remembering, and the memories are colored by this and colored by that. So the whole universe of the novel tends to be framed by the narrator's memories and thoughts.

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.

I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?

Maybe all of us at Hailsam had little secrets like that -- little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone without fears and longing.

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.

But I really wanted to find it for you. And when it looked in the end like it wasn't going to turn up, I just said to myself, one day I'll go to Norfolk and I'll find it there for her.' 'The lost corner of England,' I said.