A boy can be two, three, four potential people, but a man is only one. He murders the others.

If you caricature friends in your first novel they will be upset, but if you don't they will feel betrayed.

I obviously prefer writing novels but I take my journalism very seriously, and I enjoy doing it between novels. It gives me an opportunity to move in the outside world.

Actually, when it comes to knocking the Canadian cultural scene, nobody outdoes Canadians, myself included. We are veritable masters of self-deprecation.

In Canada, nobody is ever overthrown because nobody gives a damn.

I had, like any other young novelist, started out by believing the difficult thing was to get published and that, once you managed that, well, your financial problems were over. I discovered, like any other serious novelist, that actually they had only just begun.

Edmonton is not the end of the world but you can certainly see it from there.