I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.

I have always believed that, in a story, if something traumatic or calamitous enough happens to a kid at a formative age, that will make him or her the adult they become.

I have stood aside to see the phantoms of those days go by me. They are gone, and I resume the journey of my story.’ (David Copperfield) “But all that night he lay awake because the phantoms of those days were not gone. Like the tiny, terrible holes in the prophylactics, the phantoms of those days were not easy to detect—and their meaning was unknown—but they were there.

If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.

Good habits are worth being fanatical about.

I have learned that the consequences of our past actions are always interesting; I have learned to view the present with a forward-looking eye.

You live your life at the time you live it -- you don't have much of an overview when what's happening to you is still happening.