There are different types of readers. People draw lines at which three things intersect: the character, the author, and the reader.

I spent seven years writing The Free World. There are a lot of things I accomplished there that I'm very proud of, but I didn't want to spend another seven years writing a book like that.

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.

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.

I think even with women who come across with a tough exterior, the interior is the same. I think you'll find this with women around the word: some women, because of their circumstances, are forced to be tougher, forced to cultivate tougher exteriors.

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.