History is full of blank spaces, but good stories, invariably, are not.

Aunts offer kids an opportunity to try out ideas that don't chime with their parents and they also demonstrate that people can get on, love each other and live together without necessarily being carbon copies.

Often we don't notice the stringent rules to which our culture subjects us.

Writing about the 1950s has given me tremendous respect for my mother's generation.

It is one of the benchmarks of a culture I always think – the page at which it operates. A good way to measure it is to order a taxi and see how irate local people get if it is late.

A book is a story, even if it's non-fiction, and once I've read it, I have the story with me inside my head always.

Writers are a product of where we come from but by looking at alternatives to the culture in which we live, we can find ways to change and hopefully improve it.