If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.

I grow as many of our vegetables as I can, because my granddad was a professional gardener, and it's in the blood.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It's just a matter of joining the dots.

Chances are where you find them

I certainly don't sit down and plan a book out before I write it. There's a phrase I use called "The Valley Full of Clouds." Writing a novel is as if you are going off on a journey across a valley. The valley is full of mist, but you can see the top of a tree here and the top of another tree over there. And with any luck you can see the other side of the valley. But you cannot see down into the mist. Nevertheless, you head for the first tree.

What do you call those things at the bottom of rivers? Frogs? Stones? Unsuccessful gangsters?

And when the Patrician was unhappy, he became very democratic. He found intricate and painful ways of spreading that unhappiness as far as possible.