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I think I had a particular moment when I was 15 years old. I read 'Crime and Punishment,' and that book just, I think, more than any other book made me want to be a writer, 'cause it was the first time that I hadn't just entered a book, but a book had entered me.

I have been reading crime books ever since I was a child, but I had never tried to write one.

Writing a book is not a crime.

I read a lot of true-crime books, but sometimes they can put you in a bad mood.

I think the novel form chose me. I was a writer before I became a criminal... my first instinct was to write.

I'm snobby about books that aren't crime fiction: if I start reading a literary novel and there's no mystery emerging in the first few pages, I'm like, 'Gah, this obviously isn't a proper book. Why would I want to carry on reading it?'

I wrote the book because I wanted to be able to share some things that I had learned and as pompous as that may sound, as you get to a certain point in life, you figure so what am I doing?

I couldn't ever write a straight crime novel: there'd be an intrusion of weirdness at some point.

The only joy I had was writing what was. That book was. It no longer amuses me to be all the things I was when I wrote that. But it is my story as I was then.