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Theme is great for people who like to approach stories that way, but it's an organizing principle that helps us write a story that has some weight; it's not something that all readers have to care about.

The problem with themes is that writers don't realise they are themes until someone points them out.

What I like in novels that I read and enjoy is interplay of theme: the mystery of how we seem to be so separate as human beings.

I've never sat down and thought about the difference between plot and theme. To me, that's never been important.

Well the themes for me were and remain sex and love and grief and death - the things that make us and undo us, create and destroy, how we breed and disappear and the emotional context that surrounds these events.

I never really approach any project or story thinking of themes first or what a certain character 'represents.' Maybe other writers do, but for me, it just starts with the characters and a certain emotion I want to convey. It usually isn't until I get deeper into a book and look back a bit that I start to see the themes, etc.

I don't consciously go out looking for themes. They attach themselves to me.

When I look back over my novels what I find is that when I think I'm finished with a theme, I'm generally not. And usually themes will recur from novel to novel in odd, new guises.