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I have suffered most of the things I write about - or my friends have.

I don't write anything that I hadn't experienced or hadn't been through.

Whenever you're writing something that's reflective, you have to put yourself through some sort of ordeal just to understand the way you're feeling.

I write for myself things that I've gone through.

I am writing more than I have ever done. My life has come back to me in the most extraordinary way.

I've always had a little bit of darkness, and I've always been someone who was grieving. I had kind of had a tumultuous upbringing living in an abusive home, so for me, writing has always been a point of catharsis.

Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's a pleasure.

My writing comes not from the happy moments, but from struggle and grief.

My feeling is that writing is, for me, a pathological condition. That could sound like a mystical experience, and it may be a mystical experience, but I have learnt just to go with it.

Frankly, I have always dreaded writing - there always seemed to be pain involved, unpleasant self-examination and a lot of fear.