Stef Penney quotes:

Clearly the secret of happiness...is a variation on the general principle of banging your head against a wall, and then stopping.

Gypsies are, to say the least, underrepresented in literature and film.

I despise this weakness in myself--this endless one-sided conversation that takes the place of action...

Initially I only decided to try and write a novel because I wasn't getting enough screenwriting work. It wasn't a long-held ambition, and certainly the idea came first.

Because I work quite slowly, I have to keep myself interested over a long research and writing period. So I can't see myself writing about modern middle-class Londoners anytime soon.

Endings are never neat, because when life goes on, there is no end. You may want to speculate about what the characters get up to afterwards, but I feel it would be presumptuous of me to dictate that.

I definitely do feel a pull toward people and places that are far from my own life.

I don't use real people for inspiration.

I love research, and in fact it's liberating because you have to create your own world. No one can say "I've just got back from the 1860s, and you got it wrong." Anyway, it's fiction.

Just because we think of wolves (or the wilderness, or another race) as wild and fierce, doesn't mean there isn't another side to them.

Whenever I pick up a book I think, "Tell me something I don't know."

...it just goes to show you can't leave anything behind. You bring it all with you, whether you want to or not.

I don't think I could write about someone I didn't feel some sympathy for.

I suppose the short chapters and differing narrative points of view are quite "cinematic" devices, which came very naturally to me.

If writers stuck to firsthand experience, novels would be pretty limited.