To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?

The gamble of literature is that I make the best work I can; the most truthful, the most representative of how I see things. I try and do that and then I put it out there and say to you, "What do you think?" I hope that you think well of it, obviously.

Even when things are at their worst, there's a little voice in your head saying, 'Good story!'

Without water we are nothing", the traveler thought. "Even an emperor, denied water, would swiftly turn to dust. Water is the real monarch and we are all its slaves.

Sometimes you find your voice by trying to write like people, and sometimes you find it by trying to write unlike people.

I had a very difficult relationship with my father, which ended up okay, but there were many difficult years.

One of the things I do take some pride in is that if you had never read an article about my life, if you knew nothing about me, except that my books were being set in front of you to read, and if you were to read those books in sequence, I don't think you would say to yourself, 'Oh my God, something terrible happened to this writer in 1989.'