I never know exactly where I'm going with a story, whether it's a short story or a novel. If I did I'd soon grow bored of it. The fun, for me, is in the finding out and the making sense of it.

I've written over 100 short stories. You could say I'm obsessed with short stories.

The short story feels like the most natural length for prose fiction, or certainly for the kind of ideas and situations I like to encounter.

Belgium is a country with a split personality.

I'm not trying to write cinematic novels, but I have been told several times that my style is cinematic.

Increasingly, those who used to teach and write critical or theoretical texts are writing fiction, poetry and so on; and kinds of texts are being produced that call for budding readers rather different from those who studied literature in the past.

What the short story needs above all is for one of the big publishers to get an equivalent series up and running and to support it and promote it.