If you are a writer you're at home, which means you're out of touch. You have to make excuses to get out there and look at how the world is changing.

When I was growing up, the exam system didn't allow you to write fiction, so you never did.

The best way to reveal a character is to get them to open their mouths.

If there is a heaven, Jane Austen is sitting in a small room with Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, listening to Duran Duran, forever. If there's a hell, she's standing.

My parents were sixty years married.

I'm not recognised that much. I'm just a bald man in glasses and there's a rash of them in Dublin. It'd be different if I had a mohican.

Most working days I can be at my desk for nine hours a day.