People do sometimes ask me some really idiotic questions: 'Is your husband afraid of you putting arsenic in his food?' I replied that I have never written a book about poison, ever.

'The Chimney Sweeper's Boy' began differently from any previous book I'd written. It actually derives from a story a friend - the novel's dedicatee, Patrick Maher - told me.

I think about death every day - what it would be like, why it would happen to me. It would be humiliating to be afraid.

There are some novelists who can get away with writing about sex - Philip Roth, Ian McEwan - but they are rare.

The more you pander to what is, presumably, the taste of young people, the more you corrupt.

Ford Maddox Ford's 'The Good Soldier' is my favourite novel. I first read it in the 1950s and have read it about 20 times since. It's possibly the best-constructed book in the English language.