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

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

It seems to me that the basic plot of all historical novels is a romance swept aside by history.

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