Guernsey itself was overcrowded, but its cliffs were utterly empty. I spent a wonderful year with a friend, climbing them. It was sheer magic: you went from this pretty, busy village of an island to the sea cliffs and heard nothing but the gulls and the waves.
Simon Mawer
Sometimes I think that novelists suffer from P.C.S.: Perpetual Childhood Syndrome.
When writing fiction, you only have to know enough to be convincing on the page. I mean really convincing, of course - but you don't need academic depth.
Most of those people who saw themselves as literary types at university became bank managers.
I was a boarding school product from the age of eight, and I hated it. Though I do have a theory that boarding school is good training for writers because it's so desperately lacking in privacy: you make space for yourself by having an interior life.
One of the reasons I wrote 'The Fall' is that climbing's more than a sport, it's a way of life. When you're in it, it's all you think about.
I find it very easy to be alone. I'm a writer, for heaven's sakes!
Pundits always have something to write about; the novelist just has a blank screen.
Only occasionally do I read new fiction. Most of my reading is heavily dictated by what I'm writing at the time.
