Of course I didn't pioneer the use of food in fiction: it has been a standard literary device since Chaucer and Rabelais, who used food wonderfully as a metaphor for sensuality.

I had a great grandmother who believed in so many strange superstitions. She used to tell the future from the things that catch on to the hem of your skirt when you've been sewing, and different colored threads would mean different things... Of course, all that influenced me quite a lot as a child.

Literary fiction - if we must use the term - is not the plotless, meandering indulgence that its detractors would have you believe.

I write literary, not commercial, fiction - or so I've been told by my publishers who are proud I write literary fiction but secretly wish I wrote commercial.

That's all it's meant to be, ... This is not a literary fiction. This is page-turning fiction that you take to the beach and read for diversion. If I do that, I've done my job.

If you want to be a good lair, tell people what they want to hear. (From Hot dogs under The Dakota)