I don't mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, On the contrary; novels can perform two functions and most perform only one.

Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very bad indeed.

I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? I read the King James Bible, as all English writers should. And when I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them.

Books are like people. Some look deceptively attractive from a distance, some deceptively unappealing; some are easy company, some demand hard work that isn’t guaranteed to pay off. Some become friends and say friends for life. Some change in our absence - or perhaps it is we who change in theirs - and we meet up again only to find that we don’t get along any more.

... He had always rather liked emergencies. Other people's at any rate. They put your own problems into perspective. It was like being on a ferry. You didn't have to think about what you had to do or where you had to go for the next few hours. It was all laid out for you.

... why I like timetables, because they make sure I don't get lost in time.

If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.