You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it.

The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me.

I think it's also the case that I'm not as widely travelled, or as well-educated in history, as most of the other novelists I meet: so I have to write about my own country, at the present time, because it's more or less all I know about!

The biggest markets for my books outside the UK are France and Italy, and those are the two countries where I also have the closest personal relationships with my translators - I don't know whether that's a coincidence, or if there's something to be learned from it.

But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.

But we are entitled to look for continuity in politics.

Luckily, in my case, I have managed, by writing, to do the one thing that I always wanted to do.

Thatcherism has become bigger than she ever was.

I became quite taken over by Johnson's personality at some points while writing the biography, and since I went straight on to The Closed Circle afterwards, I did sometimes feel I could hear him whispering in my ear while I was working on it.

As soon as you start writing about how human beings interact with each other socially, you're into politics, aren't you?

They were written in the early '90s when I was strapped for cash.

I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.

But you can try to read books at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons.

It's only a drawback in the States, where most people seem to have no real interest in other countries and the notion of a novel which might offer insight into life in the UK doesn't seem to appeal very widely.

Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't.

As the books grew bigger and more ambitious, the situations in question sometimes became political ones, and so it became necessary to start painting in the social background on a scale which eventually became panoramic.

I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning.

The more melancholy side of my literary personality is much in tune with BS Johnson's.

You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it.

My only regret is that I signed away the world rights and in America they've been far and away my most successful books, but I never saw a cent from any of it.

I'm one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood.

But I have always - ever since The Accidental Woman - written novels about individuals attempting to make choices in the context of situations over which they have no control.

It seems to me that you would have to write a novel on a very small, intimate scale for it not to become political.

Ah, well, I have no talent for nonfiction, that's my problem.

Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are.

As I said, I had no publisher for What a Carve Up! while I was writing it, so all we had to live off was my wife's money and little bits I was picking up for journalism.

I'm one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood.

Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.

I did know that the book would end with a mind-boggling trial, but I didn't know exactly how it would turn out. I like a little suspense when I am writing, too.

For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

Writing allows me the time to travel and see the world, which is what I always wanted to do. I'd really like to have been Sir Richard Francis Burton, but it's the wrong century.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

Book writing is a little different because, in my case, my editor is a year younger than me and basically has the same sensibility as me.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

Maybe I spent more time dwelling on emotions than some people, and maybe that's why I ended up writing.

Writing songs has a therapeutic effect, and it either kills off love or wins the heart of the lover.

Writing novels is the most exciting.

That has to remain the principal reason for doing it, doesn't it? I know it's possible to write for money, and many very good writers have done so. But for me, it has to remain the principal thing that I actually want to do the writing.

Now I'm kind of established as a director, I much prefer directing to writing.

Writing, overall, has never been what I'd call fun. It's fulfilling. It doesn't come real easy for me.

Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven't re-invented the process every time but I almost have.

Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it.

And that's what I've learned too: writing is key.