No, absolutely not, writing doesn't have to be like a jigsaw puzzle, it can be a very linear undertaking.

I don't much believe in the idea of characters. I write with words, that is all. Whether those words are put in the mouth of this or that character does not matter to me

I know that many writers have had to write under censorship and yet produced good novels; for instance, Cervantes wrote Don Quixote under Catholic censorship.

When I write, I enjoy myself so much that what is being written really needs no reader

A good smoker, like a good lover, always takes his time with a cigar.

I was never a true journalist, I was a movie critic.

If you look closely, there is no book more visual than Three Trapped Tigers, in that it is filled with blank pages, dark pages, it has stars made of words, the famous magical cube made of numbers, and there is even a page which is a mirror.