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.

Just because we think of wolves (or the wilderness, or another race) as wild and fierce, doesn't mean there isn't another side to them.

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

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

Because I work quite slowly, I have to keep myself interested over a long research and writing period. So I can't see myself writing about modern middle-class Londoners anytime soon.

I don't think I could write about someone I didn't feel some sympathy for.

...it just goes to show you can't leave anything behind. You bring it all with you, whether you want to or not.