People Were Incredibly Kind To Our Family

As With A Wound On One's Own Body, It Is Possible To Develop An Intimacy With The Most Disturbing Of Things

I Actually Dislike, More Than Many People, Working Through Literary Allusion. I Just Feel That There's Something A Bit Snobbish Or Elitist About That. I Don't Like It As A Reader, When I'm Reading Something. It's Not Just The Elitism Of It; It Jolts Me Out Of The Mode In Which I'm Reading. I've Immersed Myself In The World And Then When The Light Goes On I'm Supposed To Be Making Some Kind Of Literary Comparison To Another Text. I Find I'm Pulled Out Of My Kind Of Fictional World, I'm Asked To Use My Brain In A Different Kind Of Way. I Don't Like That.

I Half Closed My Eyes And Imagined This Was The Spot Where Everything I'd Ever Lost Since My Childhood Had Washed Up, And I Was Now Standing Here In Front Of It, And If I Waited Long Enough, A Tiny Figure Would Appear On The Horizon Across The Field And Gradually Get Larger Until I'd See It Was Tommy, And He'd Wave, And Maybe Even Call.

What He Wanted Was Not Just To Hear About Hailsham, But To Remember Hailsham, Just Like It Had Been His Own Childhood. He Knew He Was Close To Completing And So That's What He Was Doing: Getting Me To Describe Things To Him, So They'd Really Sink In, So That Maybe During Those Sleepless Nights, With The Drugs And The Paint And The Exhaustion, The Line Would Blur Between What Were My Memories And What Were His.

Throughout My Career I've Struggled To Encourage People To Read My Books On A More Metaphorical Level. I'm Less Attached To My Settings Than, For Example, Saul Bellow. The Setting Of A Novel For Me Is Just A Part Of The Technique. I Choose It At The End.