I say the sentences again and again in my head until they sound right.

Often it doesn't occur to you what kind of novel you're writing until quite late on.

I'm afraid the negative things are always the great subjects. Failure is much more interesting than success.

When policemen go to prison in England, they have as bad a time as a pedophile.

They did more than take our youth away. They also took away the men we were going to be.

Egotism exists everywhere, but it has a different flavor in England, where the tabloid culture goes much deeper. It's just the indulgence of vulgarity, the wallowing in vulgarity. As with everything English, there's a sort of irony to it. They write a great deal about these trivial people who have a certain eminence, always with a bit of, "Isn't it ridiculous that we are writing about this person?"

Sex is hard to write about because you lose the universal and succumb to the particular. We all have our different favorites. Good sex is impossible to write about. Lawrence and Updike have given it their all, and the result is still uneasy and unsure. It may be that good sex is something fiction just can't do - like dreams. Most of the sex in my novels is absolutely disastrous. Sex can be funny, but not very sexy.