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I think my strength is always been in being very natural. I think Shakespeare and things like that would be more a stretch for me.

A novelist needs to know his own strong points and weak points.

I have my own strength.

It's your flaws, not your strengths, that go down in the depths of your books. You're exposed, like dreaming you're naked in a public building.

Strength is one of those things you're supposed to have. You don't feel that you have it at the time you're going through it.

A novel is a great act of passion and intellect, carpentry and largess. From the very beginning, I wrote to explain my own life to myself, and I invited readers who chose to make the journey with me to join me on the high wire.

There are many critics who have an idealised version of where my strengths lie.

Fiction novels, that's my game.

I'm stronger than I think I am. Mentally, physically.

I can inhabit any character in a way that is difficult to do successfully in a contemporary novel.