If I want to feel as if I'm being sucked down a fathomless gloomy tunnel for hours and hours then I have a complete set of Schopenhauer at home.

There are probably a couple of things I'd never write about until everyone I know is dead. And then there's other stuff which nobody would want to read a book about anyway.

I hate going back over what I've written. It makes me feel physically sick.

I guess the main thing I definitely don't enjoy is having a job which involves selling things. You become an author because you think you're good at writing. Not because you love to promote yourself. I enjoy some of it and I've had a really fun few years so basically I have nothing to complain about. But what I don't like is the thought that it's going to go on for the rest of my life.

I read 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Madox Ford again every so often.

I don't have a day job, so I read any time of day.

Plot is tremendously important to me: I can't stand books where nothing happens, and I can't imagine ever writing a novel without at least one murder.