The world does not have tidy endings. The world does not have neat connections. It is not filled with epiphanies that work perfectly at the moment that you need them.

I'm a tidy, neat person. But I'm not a maniac.

[The novel represented a big step for the author, too.] Coming from the world I was in, writing very esoteric short fiction ... I knew exactly what boundary I was stepping over, ... I was leaving one camp and stepping into another.

I was not going to use writing for advertising or journalism. I would tend bar, load trucks, chauffeur - do whatever it took. But from the moment I took my first writing workshop, I was a writer.

I love to write, so it rarely seems like work - even when it gets arduous.

He looks a very good player. The lad was neat and tidy and worked his socks off. Now I've got to think about the state of my club and whether we've got the finance and what we can do.