Life is a disease.

I work continuously within the shadow of failure. For every novel that makes it to my publisher's desk, there are at least five or six that died on the way. And even with the ones I do finish, I think of all the ways they might have been better.

You're supposed to get tired planting bulbs. But it's an agreeable tiredness.

Dreams say what they mean, but they don't say it in daytime language.

I'm always aware that I risk being taken for a neurasthenic prima donna when I explain to someone who wants 'just a little' of my time that five minutes of the wrong kind of distraction can ruin a working day.

None of us suddenly becomes something overnight. The preparations have been in the making for lifetime.

Life is a disease.