I do have a fantasy life in which I can grout bathrooms - but not for a living.

In truth, even if they have an imperfect insight into their own methods, I still slightly mistrust writers of fiction who are assured literary critics; it makes me suspect that they favour the word over the world it should describe. Such scribes fall victim too easily to the solecism of equating style with morality.

I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to reveal a living form.

As a bookish adolescent, I sopped up texts as if I were blotting paper and they were fluid.

There is something mysteriously powerful that can happen when young, inchoate minds come into contact with older and more worldly ones in a spirit of intellectual and creative endeavour - if I believed in progress, I suppose that's what I'd call it.

Schadenfreude is so nutritious.

This is the paradox for me: in failure alone is there any possibility of success. I don't think I'm alone in this - nor do I think it's an attitude that only prevails among people whose work is obviously "creative".