Sarah Waters

I was mad about the theatre growing up, really mad. We had a local theatre, the Torch, and I used to usher there. I would see the shows over and over again.

I'm interested in stories that aren't getting told: it's where my interests lie.

I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall in a few Victorian parlours.

I've ended up feeling fonder of 'The Paying Guests' than of any of my other novels.

I do love the past but wouldn't want to live in it.

The relationship you have with your mother is like nothing else. They do kind of know everything about you, even though they don't confront it. That is often a dynamic from childhood onwards. As a teenager, you want to be independent and do slightly furtive things.

I love film and, particularly, shorts. You don't get to see them often, and they're a great little form, like a short story.

I never expected my books to do even as well as they have. I still feel grateful for it, every single day.

I knew I'd always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, 'Well, I'd rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one'.

When theatre works, it's like nothing else, and when it doesn't, which is often, it's excruciating. It's perhaps not so excruciating when a novel goes wrong, but there is a kind of magic that can and should happen.

The early '20s were like the waist of an hourglass. Lots of things were hurtling toward it and squeezing through it and then hurtling out the other side.

My parents were the first in our family to go to grammar school. My grandparents were in service.