I like Beryl Bainbridge a great deal, and she is a writer who absolutely demands to be read a second, third, and fourth time. I admire her great courage in leaving so much unsaid and asking the reader to really engage her brain.

People always want to identify a writer with their protagonist.

The thing about getting older is that you don't need everything to be possible any more, you just need things to be certain.

Kids are naturally inventive and curious and creative, but most adults have had that beaten out of them. Writing is a form of play; you have to get rid of all those internal censors that we adults have, the things that say, 'Don't go there, that's not allowed.

I'm very eclectic in my music tastes - anything from Nina Simone to Beethoven to Talvin Singh.

If the culture is so all pervasive that you can’t think outside of it, how are you making genuine choices?

She touched his hand for the last time. "Oh, Karim, that we have already done. But always there was a problem between us. How can I explain? I wasn't me, and you weren't you. From the very beginning to the very end, we didn't see things. What we did--we made each other up." p. 382