Some is, I think, the personal in any act of writing. You find yourself caught up: you start a sentence, and it becomes revelatory, not just of the character, but of you as well.

It's not for the writer to say whether the thing is successful or not.

People everywhere feel differently at different times of their lives.

I think every book is a reaction to everything you're written before, and most immediately to the book you wrote just before.

In my experience of women, women have a greater capacity. Maybe women, even very pragmatic ones, are less guarded about showing emotions.

I think there are differences between men and women. There is more of a softness to women than there is to men, especially when it comes to those more intimate emotions: feeling love, feeling familial connections.

There are books like Darkness at Noon, which from the prose standpoint I don't think is a perfect book. It has flaws. But for its time, it was very politically courageous.