Fiction that responds to recent world events is a hostage to fortune because all momentous events look very different a year, two years, three years later.

Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves.

And it's best if you know a good thing is going to happen, like an eclipse or getting a microscope for Christmas. And it's bad if you know a bad thing is going to happen, like having a filling or going to France. But I think it is worst if you don't know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing which is going to happen.

Mother used to say it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.

For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people.

A lot of roles for people with disabilities are quite patronising. It's a real pity when they are just used to give dull PC kudos to a drama, or when they're wheeled on in a tokenistic way without any real involvement in the plot.

Use your imagination and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care.