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My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.

I write about my region, the countryside in which I grew up.

In narrative cinema, a certain terminology has already been established: 'film noir,' 'Western,' even 'Spaghetti Western.' When we say 'film noir' we know what we are talking about. But in non-narrative cinema, we are a little bit lost. So sometimes, the only way to make us understand what we are talking about is to use the term 'avant-garde.'

It's interesting how people who were once fairly radical can become, later in life, kind of conservative, and not just in terms of politics - how, if you're an artist, you can start out being somewhat avant-garde and then end up doing landscapes.

The avant-garde makes more sense to me.

I think it's also the case that I'm not as widely travelled, or as well-educated in history, as most of the other novelists I meet: so I have to write about my own country, at the present time, because it's more or less all I know about!

It is not necessary to be too avant-garde, because you risk not being understood.

I think the avant-garde often hides itself in the highly incomprehensible because they are frustrated that the real world is so boring.

I can remember in my early days of writing going to sort of writers' functions and parties and things like that, and I used to get very irritated because when people heard that you came from the suburbs, they had this notion that it was very un-cool to come from there.

You live overseas, you see these exotic places and you want to know about them. But, weirdly, it also made me homesick for all these very prosaic places in America.