As someone who sends texts messages more or less non-stop, I enjoy one particular aspect of texting more than anything else: that it is possible to sit in a crowded railway carriage laboriously spelling out quite long words in full, and using an enormous amount of punctuation, without anyone being aware of how outrageously subversive I am being.

After university, I got a job sub-editing and for years I was a literary editor.

I am not against marriage. I lived with someone for 11 years. But we weren't in love, and I thought that was quite important.

I do needlepoint from kits. I give them as gifts to people in the form of cushion covers and they are often speechless with horror.

It should come as no surprise that writers take an interest in punctuation. I have been told that the dying words of one famous 20th-century writer were, "I should have used fewer semicolons" - and although I have spent months fruitlessly trying to track down the chap responsible, I believe it none the less. If it turns out that no one actually did say this on their deathbed, I shall certainly save it up for my own.

Manners are about imagination, ultimately. They are about imagining being the other person.

The rule is: don’t use commas like a stupid person. I mean it.