I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important.

I erased the thought from my mind, but I couldn't undo the fact that I'd had the thought in the first place.

Everything I know I imagine everyone else knows as well. And then everything that everyone else knows I imagine they know on top of what I know, so I'm constantly anxious about what everyone else knows.

I hate stereotypes and I hate cliche.

But I quite like the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead.

In some ways I'm a frustrated scientist or mathematician. The amount of times I've thought I'd go back to university and do theoretical physics because I like the big questions, but really I know now that that's not quite me. What's me is to do it in novels.

You can't do science in a novel, but you can do philosophy. Or, if you're really lucky, you can manage to pose a question in such a way that other people will take it on.