William Nicholson

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.

When I began to write seriously, 40 years ago now, my chosen form was the novel.

Madly, futilely, I wrote novel after novel, eight in all, that failed to find a publisher. I persisted because for me the novel was the supreme literary form - not just one among many, not a relic of the past, but the way we communicate to one another the subtlest truths about this business of living.

Why should I be honored? Don't I have enough attention, comfort and power already?

Everyone deserves to be the hero of a novel.

There is this notion that the lives of the comfortable-off middle class don't merit being treated seriously and with compassion.

A well-off plastic surgeon can suffer just as much as an Irish lad who has been abused or whatever.

There are dozens of great American writers who write about the family.

My study is a converted garage which is largely lined with bookshelves and cardboard boxes filled with manuscripts of my film scripts, plays and books.