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A lot of the time writers are just sponges... for what's around them, and so books are helpful for focusing your mind and literally putting it into words.

When I wrote 'The Interestings,' I wanted to let time unspool, to give the book the feeling of time passing. I had to allow myself the freedom to move back and forth in time freely, and to trust that readers would accept this.

I have a strange relationship with time. I'm not aware of it passing.

I'm fascinated by the fact that we can't grasp anything about time.

For each book, the time is also broken up.

I am really interested in the way we relate to time. In particular, the way readers and writers talk to each other. Casting your voice out into the future is very beautiful to me.

For me, there is urgency in fiction, even though writing is, in itself, an act against the corrosiveness of time.

The reason why time plays a great part in so many of my tales is that this element looms up in my mind as the most profoundly dramatic and grimly terrible thing in the universe.

A period of time is as much an organising principle for a work of fiction as a sense of place. You can do geography, as Faulkner did, or you can dwell on a particular period. It provides the same framework.

I think that all writing is in search of lost time. I'm starting to realise that very clearly.