I worry sometimes that I'm a bit moralistic; always writing about men who are learning to grow up, not be so self-absorbed, selfish or badly behaved. I wonder if that's dull and liberal and wimpy? I should probably write something that celebrates wickedness.

I've been a compulsive reader for as long as I can remember.

I've only ever been recognised in the street once. In Sweden, strangely.

I really was a terrible actor. I did it for years in my twenties because it was like being at university again.

It's very important that we keep our imagination, which is our capacity to open the future, awake at a time at which the urge to collapse into the fetal position is high.

I believe that music is about making quality things, making quality art, and no matter who you decide to work with, you and that person have to come up with something special, come up with something that is excellent material, so whoever hears it and reviews it will like it.

I take for granted that for the imaginative writer, the exercise of the imagination is part of the basic process of coping with reality, just as actors need to act all the time to make up for some deficiency in their sense of themselves.

I'm a trained fine artist. I went to art school from the time I was 5 years old. I was, like, a prodigy out of Chicago. I'd been in national competitions from the age of 14.