Painting is a matter of finding the right balance between consoling and reassuring the eye and challenging and disturbing the eye.

As for goals, I don't set myself those anymore. I'm not one of these 'I must have achieved this and that by next year' kind of writers. I take things as they come and find that patience and persistence tend to win out in the end.

Writing can be a very solitary business. It's you sat at a desk typing words into a computer. It can get lonely sometimes and lots of writers live quite isolated lives.

It's not just that toil allows the appearance of spontaneity. It allows the actuality of spontaneity.

Photos represent primarily a seductive but deleterious short cut.

Because I'm such a creative person, and I've always got my nose in a book, I suppose it was only a matter of time before non-fiction turned into fiction again. But I never consciously set out to become a writer and I never thought I'd be doing the things I'm doing today.

I believe that, like most writers, my personality comes through in the fiction. So in that respect my writing can’t be like any other author’s really.