There isn't, unfortunately, any way of discovering whether you can write a publishable novel except by writing it.
It isn't that inspiration doesn't exist, but it comes only with writing.
Writing's not always a pleasure to me, but if I'm not writing every other pleasure loses its savour.
Being a writer in a library is rather like being a eunuch in a harem.
To be shockingly original with your first novel, you don’t have to discover a new technique: Simply write about people as they are and not as the predominantly liberal and humanist literary establishment believes that they ought to be.