I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird'... I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had.

Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

In this short period of my life so far, I have at least found that euphoria knows nothing about maths. And, when the time comes, we all kill our mockingbird to sustain the maths, as it's essential for our survival on this earth. (Scoffs) What a hoax, I mean brilliant one?

I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird'... I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.