I've never really understood that whole thing of writers avoiding other writers' novels while they're working on their own.

I was always determined that one way or another I would force a book on the world, even if I had to resort to writing one about a tabby cat who solves mysteries.

I started my first novel when I was 10, and have produced thousands of pages of juvenilia since.

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

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.