So often in English fiction, people are either upper-class twits, or else they're knockabouts, less than human.

A good novel is something that challenges perception, that allows you to see the world anew through a different point of view - something that genre fiction doesn't do, although it sells more because it doesn't disturb people's innate sense of what a novel should be about. Often, people want characters to be nice, for example.

It's true that all my novels have been versions of myself to some degree.

Justin Cartwright Quotes