I want to be seen as a good storyteller. I'm a manipulator as well.

Write for yourself, not for a perceived audience. If you do, you'll mostly fall flat on your face, because it's impossible to judge what people want. And you have to read. That's how you learn what is good writing and what is bad. Then the main thing is application. It's hard work.

There's nothing so aphrodisiacal for a woman as money and success.

I think one of the most poignant things is unrequited love and loneliness.

A cynic had defined aid as simply the system by which poor white people in rich countries gave money to rich black people in poor countries to put into Swiss bank accounts.

When I vacate this sack of old bones I won't care what you do with it. Bury or burn it but don't make much fuss.

People don't really know themselves until they're 30. Like most people nowadays, I went to university, got a degree and wandered for a bit. I trained to be a chartered accountant, which I didn't much enjoy, and it was only slowly that the idea of becoming a creative writer gelled.