When I meet people I try to make a joke out of my occupation, explaining that what I do all day is sit alone in a darkened room, flicking through some pages, jumping on a treadmill now and then. I keep my serious work as a writer private, but that doesn't mean it's not serious work - quite the opposite.

Sex is a good starting point for everything.

When I meet people I try to make a joke out of my occupation, explaining that what I do all day is sit alone in a darkened room, flicking through some pages, jumping on a treadmill now and then. I keep my serious work as a writer private, but that doesn't mean it's not serious work - quite the opposite.

I'm ambivalent about the Orange Prize. I was really proud to be shortlisted alongside the other writers, whom I admire. That said, I don't know if it's best way of addressing gender inequality problems.

In this moment that blooms and fades as it passes, he is enough, and all is well in the world.

I see ghosts everywhere, and that is partially a function of my being incredibly near-sighted and reading way too late into the night.

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