I have a horror of silence while I'm writing. It's like the universe is howling at me if I don't have it.

One of the things that novels have tended not to concentrate on over the centuries is the fact that people read books.

I work on a laptop specifically so I can work in cafes and pretend I'm part of the human world.

When people call something "original," 9 out of 10 times they just don't know the references or original sources involved.

As much as I revere great writing, and am still humbled by it, literary activities are no longer esoteric to me. When I read a great novel - something that I could never have written myself - I'm still looking at it a little bit like a technician.

I don't write about anything I don't love even if that love sometimes gets all screwed up and tormented.

What's beautiful about art is that it circumscribes a space, a physical and mental space. If you try to put the entire world into every page, you turn out chaos.