Writers are much better behaved nowadays, for a couple of reasons. Once upon a time nobody was thinking of a career, unless you lived in New York, so there wasn’t as much pressure to present a respectable exterior. And secondly, there was no social media. So if you were found face down on the floor – people did do that quite a bit; usually men, but not always – or fell through plate glass windows or got into scrapes, it became a rumour, and rumours are hard to pin down.

Bytelling you anything at all I’m at least believing in you, I believe you’re there, I believe youinto being. Because I’m telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are.

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.

Just remember this, when the scream at last has ended and you've turned on the lights: by the rules of the game, I must always lie.

La normalità, diceva Zia Lydia, significa ciò cui si è abituati. Se qualcosa potrà non sembrarvi normale al momento, dopo un po' di tempo lo sarà. Diventerà normale." Margaret Atwood, Il racconto dell'ancella, traduzione di Camillo Pennati

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer...an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river.

Wind comes in, your candle tips over and flares up, and a loose tent-flap catches fire, and through the widening black-edged gap you can see the eyes of the howlers, red and shining in the light from your burning paper shelter, but you keep on writing anyway because what else can you do?

I have long since decided if you wait for the perfect time to write, you'll never write. There is no time that isn't flawed somehow.

The short answer to 'Why do you write' is - I suppose I write for some of the same reasons I read: to live a double life; to go places I haven't been; to examine life on earth; to come to know people in ways, and at depths, that are otherwise impossible; to be surprised.