But I often think that so-called glamorous people are just very busy people.

For most of my life, when I've finished the book I'm writing, there've always been as many as two or three other novels waiting to be written next. And the decision driving which one of them it should be was never based on how long it had waited or how many accumulated pages of notes I had.

Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean - make sure they know what they mean!

I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.

Good habits are worth being fanatical about.

He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.

We invent what we love and what we fear.