I wish I could go back and re-write my first novel for the first time. Because I really didn't know what I was doing, and although it was published, it is, after all this time, kind of an embarrassment.

An average working day begins at 8 or 9 am, includes an hour for lunch, and ends at 5 or 6 pm.

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

You'll never get anything done if you walk around with an unchipped heart.

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.

Many fiction writers eventually want to feel that their work forms a single, unified entity.

A lyrical, brave and complex novel that takes enormous risks and pulls them all off.