I love writing from enclosed spaces: you really learn about your characters when they have tight walls to push against.

Our human impulse is to control everything, but fiction seems to me to be about allowing an element of mystery into the text.

My childhood was as conventional as you could get.

As soon as you publish a book and the reader reads it, they're making an extension of your brain with their brain.

Writing by hand is a way of letting mystery into my writing. But I'm constantly trying to figure out how to do this job. It's a work in progress.

I'm a physical learner. I learn from writing drafts, not reading them.

Song: Heloise and Abelard by Elizabeth Devlin. Beyond the a propros subject matter, this lady can really play the Autoharp. This song sounds like something you'd find on a gramophone record.