Each new book is a tremendous challenge.

I almost always write everything the way it comes out, except I tend much more to take things out rather than put things in. It's out of a desire to really show what's going on at all times, how things smell and look, as well as from the knowledge that I don't want to push things too quickly through to climax; if I do, it won't mean anything. Everything has to be earned, and it takes a lot of work to earn.

Instead, I was interested in what I guess I could call narrative indeterminacy, in questioning the apparent, taken-for-granted authority of any particular representation of the events in question.

I instantly chucked my academic ambitions and began writing fiction full-time.

Wolves and those who see them are shot on sight.

To feel our character, our personality, and our personal, hard-won history fade from being is to be exposed to whatever lies beneath these comforting, operational conveniences. What remains when the conscious and functioning self has been erased is mankind's fundamental condition – irrational, violent, guilt-wracked, despairing, and mad.

My first real breakthrough collided with the last months of Callaghan's Labour government, which had every intention of enjoying my success as much as I did.