We read to know that we are not alone.

There are dozens of great American writers who write about the family.

Everyone deserves to be the hero of a novel.

My study is a converted garage which is largely lined with bookshelves and cardboard boxes filled with manuscripts of my film scripts, plays and books.

He accepted what each moment brough him, and never troubled himself with matters that were outside his control.

When I began to write seriously, 40 years ago now, my chosen form was the novel.

Madly, futilely, I wrote novel after novel, eight in all, that failed to find a publisher. I persisted because for me the novel was the supreme literary form: not just one among many, not a relic of the past, but the way we communicate to one another the subtlest truths about this business of living.