The profession of ‘writer’ wasn’t listed among the boxes you ticked for careers night… How novelists learnt their craft and made a career of it, to me was an utter enigma.

‘I try to experience a novel as an ordinary reader and give it the fullest chance to exert its power by reading right to the end. I want to see how leads play out, how the author resolves artistic problems as they arise.’

‘Writers don’t need to be prisoners, or exiles, or cursed by elements of their own society to feel an outsider. The biographies of writers are littered with references to feelings of distance.’

‘There was always more to marvel at. The creation of emotion. The uncanny beauty of a phrase upon the page. The places you went which you never expected to see.’