My mother started to suffer from multiple sclerosis, but nobody knew what MS was then. My father didn't - and later he suffered a great deal of guilt over that. It was an awful business and very fraught.
Old women especially are invisible. I have been to parties where no one knows who I am, so I am ignored until I introduce myself to someone picked at random. Immediately, word gets round, and I am surrounded by people who tell me they are my biggest fans.
I started by writing short stories, but they weren't very good; I tried them on various magazines, and none of them was published. People were nicer then about turning you down, and so I didn't lose heart - I kept on writing and wrote a lot of books, one or two of which I finished, and others I didn't.
I've done the big 12-city tours, and I'm never going to do that again - never. I was younger then. It wears you out, you know.
People always tell me my books are so dark; I don't think they're particularly dark. I'm not like that. I'm quite a cheerful soul.
There are some novelists who can get away with writing about sex - Philip Roth, Ian McEwan - but they are rare.
Ford Maddox Ford's 'The Good Soldier' is my favourite novel. I first read it in the 1950s and have read it about 20 times since. It's possibly the best-constructed book in the English language.
I have had quite a lot of prizes, but I don't think it makes any difference to the ease or difficulty to the writing process.
I call myself an agnostic. I'm open to change. I'm the same sort of person, although much less aggressive, as Richard Dawkins.
I very much like writing about homosexual relations. I don't quite know why. Perhaps it's because I feel there's still so much to be said about them.
Crimes are more often committed out of fear than wickedness. People live frightened, desperate lives.
I often think what it was like not to have much money. I don't think it's good for people to be born into money and not know what it is never to have it.