I no longer attempt to rationalise inexplicable phenomena; there are explanations, Horatio, but they are likely to be beyond our ken.

I don't buy the 'cynical voice'; I think we've had too much of that over the past few years; it's become deadening. I'm a passionate person, who is not afraid to express emotion in print.

Words become, 'product', so that it is as though you'd bought a 'hand-cooked' packet of crisps; there are different makes, various flavours, but in the end, they're all rather similar and while eating them while sipping white wine makes you feel posher than if you'd bought the bog-standard ones, afterwards you don't remember very much about them.

In everything I write, I seek out something which I term, 'the music'. This is an energy centre which I cannot define and which lies beyond the realm of obvious poetic technique.

If you read many contemporary literary novels today, you may notice that regardless of the subject matter there's a 'sameness' about them, the way in which thoughts are expressed and ideas, conveyed, the sometimes dogmatic application of what are, at best, useful maxims such as, 'less is more', the narrative techniques utilised, even the same, irritating, stylistic devices scattered like pepper all over the pages.

I no longer attempt to rationalise inexplicable phenomena; there are explanations, Horatio, but they are likely to be beyond our ken.

I know people who've passed every creative writing course under the sun and who are more analytically intelligent and far better-read than I, but who just can't write either fiction or drama. It's like any art-form. In order for talent to be developed, crafted, it's got to be there in the first place.