'It's good, he said, but you can still cut it. He was right. It turns out you can always lose ten percent of the words. Always.'

'I was taken to the library for a fresh crop of books every week; a magic carpet ride to a million different places and times.'

'Overall when I write I try to replicate not so much these writers' characters, or plots or styles, but the way I felt when I was reading their books.'

'I realised that – belatedly – I wanted more of a say. So that was the first reason I wanted to write something, and still want to write: to be heard.'

'When I write I disappear. I can go anywhere. I am entirely free.'

'I am a voracious and obsessive researcher, quite happy to read or at least skim-read an entire book in the hope of extracting a couple of salient points.'

'Recording these things as I look at them and telling you about them as exactly as I can gives me a deep pleasure. I think that is why I started writing.'

'Magpie-like I collect these tantalising fragments. They stay with me, glittering at the edges of consciousness until I pick one out intending to polish it until it gleams.'

'Read the masters of the past, and learn how and how not, to write. If you think independently reading others strengthens our independence rather than harming it.'

'If I had ever experienced a tenth of what I write about I would have long ago been consigned to a padded cell, or be six feet under. I write to escape what I know.'