I’m sure there are people who are content to run errands and report for work on time and wait, with an enlivening eagerness, for the lunch bell. I wish them well. They have, however, never been the subjects of novels, and in all likelihood, will never be.

Writers do not find subjects; subjects find them.

It feels a little scary for most writers because when you're writing, you're completely in charge – you can say this book is all mine, it's my world. Whether giving over some of that has any monetary value or not, we'll see.

I suspect any serious reader has a first great book, just the way anybody has a first kiss.

You have started the book with this bubble over your head that contains a cathedral full of fire - that contains a novel so vast and great and penetrating and bright and dark that it will put all other novels ever written to shame. And then, as you get towards the end, you begin to realise, no, it's just this book.

Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write.