The poets whom I knew then were all men and all seemed dauntingly sure of themselves - although I am sure that really they were as uncertain as I was.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

It is a violation which has obsessed the tyrants of the twentieth century. They do not want simply to kill their opponents, but to liquidate them, to deny that they have ever existed.

A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.

As individuals, we are shaped by story from the time of birth; we are formed by what we are told by our parents, our teachers, our intimates.

Fiction came quite a while later. I began with short stories and fiction for children.

I concentrate on the lives of individuals whom the reader comes to know and feel with intimately.

I could start with Mandelstam, who was a huge influence on my early writing.

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.

I hope that readers will tear through my books because they can't stop themselves - and then, maybe, read them again and find new things there.

I was always influenced by language.

I would like people to come into my Dreamworld and then choose to stay.

If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.

My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint.

Poets go through a very tough apprenticeship in the use of words.

The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it.

Those who try to obliterate the past are injuring the present.

To try to expunge an individual's history is a terrible violation.

When you are young you don't always realise how full of doubts everybody is.

Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.