If I had to summarize, most broadly, my concerns as a writer, I'd say the question 'How then must we live?' is at the heart of it, for me.

As any of us approaches middle age, we inevitably come up against our limitations: the realization that certain dearly-held fantasies may not be realized; that circumstances have thwarted us; that even with intention and will we may not be able to set our ship back on the course we'd planned.

The more accurately one can illuminate a particular human experience, the better the work of art.

The effort to create a work of art that is true and potentially lasting, that is the very best work of art you can create at that point in your life - a book that may only reach or move a few people but will seem to those people somehow transformative. That's the ideal; that's always the motivation.

I believe that, in an ideal world, writers would feel free to write what matters to them without having to consider success, failure, the market, etc.

Yes, writing is essential to me. It's my way of living in the world.

I'm not a writing group member, not a joiner in that way. I don't seek a wide swath of feedback.

I went around in my teens and early 20s thinking that life was a con trick. I had managed to grow up believing in all sorts of romantic ideas about hard work and justice and truth, and it seemed the real world was much more complicated and shaded than I wanted to believe.

I remember going to a son's friend's bar mitzvah, and the text that he chose to explicate was right at the beginning of Genesis. It was not about a fall from grace or a fall from perfection; it was about an awakening into consciousness, which is what it means to be human.

I had a memory span about as long as the lines in a school play.

Awards bolster your confidence in wonderful ways. But they aren't the world.

We read to find life, in all its possibilities.

Everybody's always living in fiction just as much as children, but the way our stories are faked is curtailed by all sorts of narratives we take into our own lives about what are the true narratives and what's not.

The fictional narratives that television, film, and the news provide for girls and young women are appalling.

Obstruction can be caused by so many factors - perfectionism, distraction, faltering confidence, external demands and pressures. At some point, of course, you've got to push through it all if you're to write, and if you don't, or can't, you're sunk.

What is the truth? Is it what you experience? Is it what I experience? Or is there some objective truth in between?

I digress a lot - it's how I experience the world. I would like to write in a way that will convey that to the reader, but also I need clarity.

Democrats need to value free speech and we should not be intimidated into giving an inch of it away.

Some who campaign against hate, seem to hate the Brexit party more than they love peace.

The paternalism of the Conservative party is breathtaking.

Senior Tories have exhibited a brand of entitled arrogance that implies that they own Brexit. It seems that anyone else who claims its mantle can be pushed to one side. And that includes voters.

Left to their own devices, the Tories will squash the life out of what Brexit really represents in terms of the chance to shake up political life and overturn a complacent status quo. We cannot let that happen.

You see, Leavers desperately need a psychological win. We need to feel our vote for change can actually change things.

For many Leavers, having been demonised in the vilest terms as racists, stupid and worse, it is hard to simply employ a hug-a-Remainer approach.