Neil Cross Quotations

I was writing novels at eight. It was a science fiction epic, which went by the unimprovable title of 'Another Kind of Warrior.' I'd write it beginning to end, but when I'd finished it, I was another year older. The quality of writing and thought changed radically, so I'd start it again. I re-wrote that same book until I was 16.

I don't get on with novelists, don't enjoy their company. Once you've worked for a publisher, you understand the species, see them in their natural habitat, and it's not always pretty.

Writing a novel is an intense and lonely business, but you have the reward at the end of a very direct dialogue between you and the reader.

The fictional character with whom I most profoundly identified was Yossarian in Catch-22. Always did, still do.

I am very interested in theology. In fact, my first degree was in theology, so it's something that interests me greatly.

I love ghost stories, and I also have a great fondness and love for 'Quatermass,' which in many ways is the show that preceded 'Doctor Who.' 'Doctor Who' borrowed quite a bit from 'Quatermass' and probably wouldn't have existed in anything like the form we recognise today if 'Quatermass' hadn't come before it.

What I love about Indiana Jones is he always bites off slightly more than he can chew. The guy he's fighting is always slightly tougher than he is, but he just refuses to give up. And that's what makes Indiana Jones a hero: not his superpowers, but his refusal to be beaten.

I wrote 'Mr. In-Between' very quickly when I was about 23. I wrote the penultimate chapter, then realised I'd done something which was written to the best of my abilities. I panicked. I hesitated to finish the final chapter and went into withdrawal for three years. I decided to pick it up again after I went drinking with author Tim Binding.

I'd always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s as substitutes for experience.

I love to see heroes who fuel some kind of moral furnace inside them, who are driven to take on the evils of the world, despite the fact that the evils of the world are more powerful than them. And essentially can never be defeated, but they refuse to bow down. And in order to enjoy that aspect of the hero, you've got to put them through hell.