I've always just wanted to earn my living by writing. The best thing is to go into my study in the morning and stay there and put words together.

Orwell has always been a huge influence on me.

Don't try to write too much in a single session. One thousand words a day is quite enough. Stop after about four or five hours.

But only a fool sails into combat with nature

History is what we bring to it, not just the events themselves, but how we interpret those events.

Does a name stick because it suits a man or does the man, unconsciously, evolve into his name?

It is perfectly legitimate to write novels which are essentially prose poems, but in the end, I think, a novel is like a car, and if you buy a car and grow flowers in it, you're forgetting that the car is designed to take you somewhere else.