From a good book, I want to be taken to the very edge. I want a glimpse into that outer darkness.

With English literature, if you do a bit of shonky spelling, no one dies, but if you're half-way through a maths calculation and you stick in an extra zero, everything just crashes into the ravine.

I could invent another world. I'm not terribly keen on this one.

At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We have jobs, children, partners, debts. This is the part of us to which literary fiction speaks.

The way of creating believable characters is not by conforming to a set of PC rules.

But I said that you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.

All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are.