I don't believe necessarily the past is in the past. It's eternal, it's all around us.

I strike up conversations all the time and it is very interesting, finding out about things I know nothing about.

None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.

I am in the Pitte, but I have gone so deep that I can see the brightness of the Starres at Noon.

I wanted to be a poet when I was 20; I had no interest in fiction or biography and precious little interest in history, but those three elements in my life have become the most important.

The ordinary routines of life are never chronicled by the historian, but they make up almost the whole of experience.

To be a writer was always my greatest aim. I remember writing a play about Guy Fawkes when I was 10. I suppose it's significant, at least to me, that my first work should be about a historical figure.