When I'm working, I'm not so much disciplined as obsessive. I have this feeling that I need to clear everything away and get this down.

If you can just actually let the character be for a bit, then you get the right sense.

There are men who would do anything, asleep, and I'm not sure what stops them when they wake. I do not know how they draw the line.

The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.

When you find yourself alone, or in a transition, you dream more. These are also the times when you read books.

If you try to control it too much, the book is dead. You have to let it fall apart quite early on and let it start doing its own thing. And that takes nerve, not to panic that the book you were going to write is not the book you will have at the end of the day.

People do not change, they are merely revealed.