I don't only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.
The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.
If a novelist tells you something she knows or thinks, and you believe her, that is not because either of you think she is God, but because she is doing her work - as a novelist.
I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.
The true exercise of freedom is - cannily and wisely and with grace - to move inside what space confines - and not seek to know what lies beyond and cannot be touched or tasted.
I'd like to write the way Matisse paints.
I know that part of the reason I read Tolkien when I'm ill is that there is an almost total absence of sexuality in his world, which is restful.
Why do we take pleasure in gruesome death, neatly packaged as a puzzle to which we may find a satisfactory solution through clues - or if we are not clever enough, have it revealed by the all-powerful tale-teller at the end of the book? It is something to do with being reduced to, and comforted by, playing by the rules.
I did a lot of my writing as though I was an academic, doing some piece of research as perfectly as possible.
Cyclists. I really hate them. I wish they would not be so self-righteous and realise they are a danger to pedestrians. I wish cyclists would not vindictively snap off wing mirrors on cars when they were trying to cross in front of the car at a danger to motorists and pedestrians.
I'm not very interested in myself. I do have a deep moral belief that you should always look out at other things and not be self-centred.
I like feeling my way into different minds and experiences. It comes naturally and always has.
I don't think it is an easy thing to write and expect to be commercial, even if you are from Venus and a hermaphrodite.
Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.
I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not.
Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends.
I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.
We talk about feelings. And about sex. And about bodies, and their gratification, violation, repair, decoration, deferred, maybe permanently deferred, mortality. Feelings are a bodily thing, and respecting them is called, is, kindness.
Biographies are no longer written to explain or explore the greatness of the great. They redress balances, explore secret weaknesses, demolish legends.
For a long time, I felt instinctively irritated - sometimes repelled - by scientific friends' automatic use of the word 'mechanism' for automatic bodily processes. A machine was man-made; it was not a sentient being; a man was not a machine.
