My novels are often about people who are in love or attracted to each other.

I don't think they'll ever make a retro Bond.

There is a disconnect between the film Bond and the literary Bond which is their contemporaneity. I don't suffer from that.

I have to start my real life soon, before I die of boredom and frustration.

There's a sense in all my novels that nothing is certain.

Is that a good definition of marking the ageing watershed? That moment when you realize - quite rationally, quite unemotionally - that the world in the not-so-distant future will not contain you: that the trees you planted will continue growing but you will not be there to see them.

I have this lock of hair that keeps falling across my forehead. It drives me mad.