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Having spent so much time in a fictional world, I prefer to read about the real world.

I loved to read and to write, but then something happened. As I made my way through school, I kept getting handed books to read that didn't excite me and didn't even remotely connect to the realities of my life.

I don't want at the end of my life to look back at just a bunch of fictional movies I was involved in that kept taking me away from the real world.

My first two novels were set in the past, and that freed me up in a lot of ways; it allowed me to find my way into my story and my characters through research.

My reading and drawing drew me away from the ordinary interests, and I lived a great deal in the world of imagination, feeding upon any book that fell into my hands. When I had got hold of a really thick book like Hugo's 'Les Miserables,' I was happy and would go off into a corner to devour it.

I think most writers will say that at the start of each book they think, 'I'm not sure I can do this.' But eventually, you reach a magical point where the story suddenly becomes real to you, and you become totally invested in it.

I knew I wanted to write novels, but I could not finish what I started. The closer I got, the more ways I'd find to screw it up.

I instantly chucked my academic ambitions and began writing fiction full-time.

Part of the reason I wanted to write a novel was that in fiction I could do something that's difficult to do in real life, which is to dwell on the stark details of the experience without really needing to create that narrative of redemption.