Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description.

There are those of us who believe that under certain conditions the cruelest thing you can do to people you love is to force them to live. There are those of us who define living not by whether the heart beats and the lungs lift but whether the spirit is there, whether the music box plays.

All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.

Not writing at all leads to nothing.

Novels are usually built on conflict, sometimes very, very difficult conflict. It's why men write war novels - because there you go, there's the conflict writ large.

You're like a cake when you're young. You can't rush it or it will fall, or just turn out wrong. Rising takes patience, and heat.

Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description.