The best advice on writing I've ever received is to take it seriously, because to do it well is all-consuming.

How could they say that they truly loved each other? They had simply grown up together, been children together, and the proximity of it, the closeness of it, had produced in them love s illusion. And yet - on the other hand - what was love if it wasn't this instinct she felt.

My book is traditional. It runs counter to the post-modern spirit.

Time made me change. I gradually woke up to the realization that this is who I am, an author, a public figure, and I couldn't just hide in my study, tapping away at the keyboard and pretend that I didn't have a role to play beyond stringing words together.

That the world was silent and cold and bare and that in this lay its terrible beauty

Cities produce in me melancholy or a tension I don't need.

What some people interpret as brooding melancholy is serenity. I don't feel required to grasp all the time.