The key to mostly anything is pretending your first time isn't.

I'm not a sociologist, and the novel has often concerned itself with sociology. It's one of the generating forces that's made fiction interesting to people. But that's not my concern. I'm interested in psychology. And also certain philosophical questions about the world.

What I'm constantly striving for in my prose is clarity. So that, ideally, the writing will become so transparent that the reader will forget that the medium of communication is language.

I believe that written stories will continue to survive because they answer an essential human need. I think movies might disappear before the novel disappears, because the novel is really one of the only places in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.

The level at which my OCD enters my writing process isn't that I slap the keyboard - it's more along the lines of a compulsive need to swap syllables around, rework words and sentences - I revise for the pleasure and satisfaction of it, rather than out of a sense of duty.

As I get older I find that the friendships that are the most certain, ultimately, are the ones where you and the other person have made substantial amounts of money for one another.

But the day I can't shrug off a twinge of self-pity, is the day I'm washed up for keeps.