Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.

In twenty years I've never had a day when I didn't have to think about someone else's needs. And this means the writing has to be fitted around it.

Sometimes I read one of my stories, maybe one that I wrote thirty years ago, and I think, Now I'd go and do it differently. Or I think I would just alter a phr…

In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.

One might say that every fine story must leave in the mind of the sensitive reader an intangible residuum of pleasure; a cadence, a quality of voice that is ex…

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know wh…

'I have this thing for generating character-oriented plots, where you look at a character and say 'What's the worst thing I could do to this guy?' I've found t…