Pat Barker in the Paris Review

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/7290/pat-barker-the-art-of-fiction-no-243-pat-barker

BARKER

Well, you see, this is what we have in common with the Bronze Age or World War I. We have these bodies that have actually not evolved during that time, as far as we know. The truth of the body is for me the most important route into the historical past, and into the mythic past as well. You have five senses—well, more than five, at least six because you have this sense of gravity, of where your body is in space—but that’s all you’ve got as a writer. There is literally almost nothing else. The whole thing rests on this incredibly simple foundation.