I tell you, once a girl's got a dose of novels she's a pushover for iambic pentameter.
I deeply respect literature and expect to gain insight from a book and to identify emotionally with its characters. I therefore avoid reading suspense novels or science fiction.
Iris Murdoch did influence my early novels very much, and influence is never entirely good.
I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.
In novels in general - and also on the television - we do live in a world where bodies is what we are. We do not talk about the spirit or the soul, and there is a sense that we no longer talk about beliefs, either Freudian or Marxist.
In England, everyone believes if you think, then you don't feel. But all my novels are about joining together thinking and feeling.
I always say I write my own novels and the characters don't take control of me, but in fact, I look at the characters in the early stages and I think, 'What is he or she like,' and they slowly come together and they become the person they are.
I find the attempt to find things out, which scientists are possessed by, to be as human as breathing, or feeding, or sex. And so the science has to be in the novels as science and not just as metaphors.
In high school, my English teacher Celeste McMenamin introduced me to the great novels and Shakespeare and taught me how to write. Essays, poetry, critical analysis. Writing is a skill that was painful then but a love of mine now.
I was definitely more of a movie/cartoon guy than comics, but I really do like graphic novels - I don't have the time to sit down and read Stephen King like I used to, so I find picking up 'Saga' every now and then and just diving back into it is a great way to stay reading.
