I don't use real people for inspiration.

I love research, and in fact it's liberating because you have to create your own world. No one can say "I've just got back from the 1860s, and you got it wrong." Anyway, it's fiction.

Gypsies are, to say the least, underrepresented in literature and film.

Endings are never neat, because when life goes on, there is no end. You may want to speculate about what the characters get up to afterwards, but I feel it would be presumptuous of me to dictate that.

Clearly the secret of happiness...is a variation on the general principle of banging your head against a wall, and then stopping.

Initially I only decided to try and write a novel because I wasn't getting enough screenwriting work. It wasn't a long-held ambition, and certainly the idea came first.

Whenever I pick up a book I think, "Tell me something I don't know."