The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I love books where you feel you're having a romance with the writer.
I'm such a fangirl when it comes to other writers. I read 250 books a year, and I'm always talking up books by other authors.
As a younger person, I was obsessed with Ray Bradbury, and I think his stories did more to shape me as a storyteller than anybody else - even though, when I read them now, a lot of them seem overly sentimental. But that's probably the writer that I've thought about the most, even though I don't necessarily like a lot of his work.
I like reading a lot. Jeffrey Archer and Robert Ludlum are my favourite authors. I love making realistic cinema, so I read non-fiction more.
William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Richard Yates, William Styron, James Salter, Alice Munro. They're very different writers, and I admire them for different reasons. The common thread, I guess, is that they remind me what's possible, why I wanted to write fiction in the first place.
I am a voracious reader, so it's difficult for me to give a list of my favourite authors of all time.
I love books; my suitcases are always full of them. Books and shoes. I read when I am sad, when I am happy, when I am nervous. My favourite British author is Jane Austen, and my favourite American one is John O'Hara.
One of my favorite modern American authors is Denis Johnson. I'm deeply inspired by all of his work - I rip him off constantly.
I don't think I have one particular favourite writer. I have many whose works I will always buy or reread - Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ruth Rendell, James Ellroy, William McIlvanney, Kate Atkinson, John Burnside, Louise Welsh, Iain Banks.
The first author I remember being obsessed by, actually realizing 'I like the way he writes and I like the way he tells stories,' was C.S. Lewis and the 'Narnia' books.