I'm a great reader that never has time to read.

The first act of insight is throw away the labels. In fiction, while we do not necessarily write about ourselves, we write out of ourselves, using ourselves; what we learn from, what we are sensitive to, what we feel strongly about--these become our characters and go to make our plots. Characters in fiction are conceived from within, and they have, accordingly, their own interior life; they are individuals every time.

A story is not the same thing when it ends as it was when it began.

Every story teaches me how to write it. Unfortunately, it doesn't teach me how to write the next one.

Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.

Beware of a man with manners.

The writing of a novel is taking life as it already exists, not to report it but to make an object, toward the end that the finished work might contain this life inside it and offer it to the reader. The essence will not be, of course, the same thing as the raw material; it is not even of the same family of things. The novel is something that never was before and will not be again.