Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently.
I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks.
To create a past that seemed authentic but would be a fiction, you need an invented language.
One room is always enough for one person. Two rooms is not enough for two people. That is one of the conundrums in life.
My characters are always on the outside; the spotlight’s not on them. But they do get somewhere.
My books always begin with a sentence and an image – not necessarily connected.
Many people feel their outer self isn’t the whole self.
London is a small place, and it is very incestuous. People know where you live. Everybody is sort of on top of each other.
If we make anything that lasts, it outlives us.
I wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break.
The world is surely wide enough to walk without fear.
What the myths say, is that you have to be the hero of your own life. You’re the one who has to take charge of who you are, you’re the one who has to take control. And also, you’re the one who can bring something to the community.
Trust your creativity.
What I want does exist if I dare to find it...
History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.
I never wanted children. If I’d been deeply in love with a man and he’d wanted children, it would have been difficult.
I never cared about money.
When it is time to get to work, I go away completely and don’t do anything except the work. And that can be 16 hours a day.
The work that lasts over time is the work which still speaks to us when all contemporary interest in that work is extinct.
The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down.