I actually tried to think of the story [Room] in gender-neutral terms at first and said to myself, "OK, would this work if it were a man?" Well no, you can't make a man pregnant, so it's got to be a woman.

I really like to keep my palette small but to be very intense, very myopic.

Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can't. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what's going to happen in each chapter and each scene.

You cannot predict literary success; the only way you can possibly aim for it is to do your thing and do it well.

Sometimes when persons say definitely it sounds actually less true.

Sometimes, I think there's a lack of ambition in me. But then sometimes, I think, no, you can, like William Blake said, you know, see heaven in a grain of sand. If you look really, really closely at a situation, you can find almost endless interest in it.

There are so many examples today of how the kind of wonderful zealousness and unquestioning loyalty of young people can be harnessed by all sorts of insidious powers.