“The Daily Mail can't say 'asylum-seeker' without saying 'foreign criminal' in th…” — Chris Cleave

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.