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.

I'm reasonably good at talking onstage, but actually holding court in a pub is all to do with power dynamics which I don't think has anything to do with fiction.

The simile has to match the tone of its surroundings and has to be like a little joke. Writing a simile that isn't funny on some level is quite hard.

I never really have blank page syndrome. I don't get blocked. I have a plan for my novel before I start which, although incomplete, probably contains enough material for several novels by a quieter kind of writer. And I try to get my arms around that material and see where it takes me.

Most romances aren't swept aside by big historical events. Most romances in the history of the world fall apart because of other, smaller happenings. History can sometimes be in the background, the thing which instead of rupturing your life merely irritates you by pressing itself now and then into the foreground.

There's never a bad time to put earplugs in. They're the kind of thing you can reject as a bit lame, but somebody told me to do start wearing earplugs and it turned out to be great advice.

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.