Long before writing, people were telling each other stories and the audiobook goes all the way back to that tradition.

For every once upon a time there must be a story to follow, because if a story doesn't, something else will, and it might not be as harmless as a story.

I was born in Norwich in 1946, and educated in England, Zimbabwe, and Australia, before my family settled in North Wales.

If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I ask of a novel I'm reading is that it should know a fraction more about the things I know than I do. When I'm writing...I ask myself: would I be convinced by this if I read it? If I knocked against this bit of scenery, would it feel solid?

I look at the state of the American politics and I scratch my head in wonder. How can the Republican Party, any party, have fallen into to such a state of self-destructiveness - self-destructive stupidity? How is it possible? I don't know. It's an absolute mystery to me.

I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them.

One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which the did happen.