I don't keep any copies of my books in the house - they go to my mum's flat. I don't like them around.

Jerome said, It's like, a family doesn't work anymore when everyone in it is more miserable than they would be if they were alone, You know?

You are never stronger...than when you land on the other side of despair.

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.

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.

There's a perception that novels can't usually allow for your kind of absolute attention to detail.

When I was young, I was very technical about these things. I didn't like to admit to any intimate relation with what I was writing.