The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the concerns of fiction.

I'm intrigued by the way in which physical appearance can often direct a person's life; things happen differently for a beautiful woman than for a plain one.

The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form.

And in another year everything will be different yet again. It is always like that, and always will be; you are forever standing on the brink, in a place where you cannot see ahead; there is nothing of which to be certain except what lies behind. This should be terrifying, but somehow it is not.

Mythology is much better stuff than history. It has form; logic; a message.

Unless I am a part of everything I am nothing.

We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.