And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy. But in another way, when I'm writing, what it's about for me is being good on the page. None of that noise could change the way I feel about my writing. Which is not always particularly positive.

I read Carver. Julio Cortázar. Amis's essays. Baldwin. Lorrie Moore. Capote. Saramago. Larkin. Wodehouse. Anything, anything at all, that doesn't sound like me.

All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.

This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.

I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.

Are there other people who, when watching a documentary set in a prison, secretly think, as I have, 'Wish I had all that time to read'?

I'm a writer who never writes about sex. It's so far from my own fictional world.