Chris Cleave

The Daily Mail can't say 'asylum-seeker' without saying 'foreign criminal' in the same sentence. I'm sure it's practically editorial policy.

If I can't write it would be as if I died.

I'm always determined that as a novelist I'm going to go out there and research my characters very thoroughly before I start writing.

I think that there's something extremely beautiful about the Olympic ideal and its motto - 'Swifter, higher, stronger' - it's such a beautiful motto, and it celebrates everything which is the antithesis of death and dissolution and entropy.

I like to push characters to extremes so they have to make really tough decisions and there is no life more extreme than that of an athlete.

I'm not happy with just repeating myself.

This thing with being lovers, it isn't like being married.

I'm really interested in people's decisions.

It's extremely hard for athletes to accept what's happened to them sometimes. It's hard to be beaten by a small margin, and I've spoken with athletes who, for years afterward, have been tormented by the knowledge that, had they done something ever so slightly different, they could have been one-ten-thousandth of a second quicker.

Studying psychology is fun because you're always looking for the same things I think a writer should be looking for, which is the story behind the story.

There's what people say, and there's what people mean, and I like to explore the difference between the two.

I think, in common with a lot of novelists, I wasn't the most athletic guy at school.

My whole life is my work.

I'm a much better writer for being a father.

I think that the relationship between two top-level athletes who are rivals is one of the most fascinating human relationships to explore. It's always one atom away from being a tragedy.

The reason why I love people, and writing about them, is because they don't always respond with hate and anger. If they did I wouldn't have a story to tell. Who wants to know about someone who was brutalised and became brutal? I'm interested in the exceptions.