We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published.

If being a spokesman for a generation is a fleeting occupation, being a symbol of an era is downright dangerous for anyone who has the bad luck to outlive it.

I think it's dangerous to think you know what you're writing. I usually don't know, and usually I just discover it in the course of writing. I envy those writers who can outline a beginning, a middle, and end. Fitzgerald supposedly did it. John Irving does. Bret Easton Ellis does. But for me, the writing itself is the process of discovery. I can't see all that far ahead.

Something changed. Somewhere along the line you stopped accelerating.

I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.

Reading a novel is just a much more involving and intimate experience than the act of watching a film. I mean, you literally get inside of a novelist's head, and you invest many hours to do so.

There is a type of writer that can happily bury themselves in the country and dig very deep, but I'm not like that.