My first novel, 'John Crow's Devil,' freed me up to write about the past, and 'The Book of Night Women' freed me up to have a book totally based on voice and being very spontaneous.

What I find, particularly with young writers and readers, is that they don't want complicated feelings.

We shouldn't romanticize rejection. There's nothing romantic about rejection. It's horrible.

The Daily Mail' interviewed my friends in Jamaica to find out if I was ever the victim of a vicious homophobic attack because, to them, I'm a gay refugee. But nothing like that happened. So, no surprise, that story didn't appear. I'm really pretty boring.

You have to try and take care of your service games and not get into those awkward sudden-death deuces that can only get you into trouble.

Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.

There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

I was brought up by a Marxist rationalist stepfather, so I don't believe in the supernatural or religion or horoscopes, and the absolute nature of death is quite helpful for me. My husband was there, then he wasn't.