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When I began to write seriously, 40 years ago now, my chosen form was the novel.

I think the kind of unexpected I really love is when you open books and the actual way of writing is different and interesting. Like reading Virginia Woolf for the first time or Lawrence Durrell for the first time.

I'm becoming more of a novelist as I get older. The novel just seems the truer form. There's less artifice involved.

For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.

I am truly bored with 99 per cent of conventional novels. I do think it's a somewhat desiccated form.

I like to be surprised. The best writing is when it defies me, when it starts going a different way than I had planned.

I always love novels that open up a subject to me - like raising a window to a beautiful, mysterious world outside.

I've written fiction for as long as I can remember; it's always been my preferred form of play.

The books I like to read the most feel like they've been written by somebody who had to write them or go crazy. They had to get them out of their heads. I like that kind of urgency.

The novel has always been the form that incorporates other forms. For me, it has always been the ultimate medium.