Sometimes you have to trust grownups, perhaps more so when they are not there to actually supervise you.

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.

My novels are high concept. I guess big ideas interest me more than, say, the minutiae of domestic life.

I hate stereotypes and I hate cliche.

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 wonder if the reason I tend to say yes to everything is because I deeply believe that I can survive anything.

I wonder at what point my life swerved to avoid that, and if that life would have been nicer than the one I've got.