Politicians often like to suggest that their policies come about through objective thinking, but if you look at British fascists, for example, what you see - what I see - is a group of people coming to the decisions they came to because something happened to them when they were nine-years-old, or because of some deep prejudice that formed in them subsequent to that.

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.

When I'm writing new material, I never have any trouble coming up with ideas.

Until I was 16, I read nothing but science fiction. I loved William Gibson and I still do. But my favourite book when I was growing up, for a long time, was 'Snow Crash' by Neal Stephenson, which I must have read about a dozen times when I was a teenager.

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.

You couldn’t truly love anything if you didn’t hate at least something. Indeed, perhaps you couldn’t truly love anything if you didn’t hate almost everything.

I would love to learn how to air kiss non-awkwardly.