You need so much energy and encouragement to write that if someone says something negative, some of that energy goes.

I'm sure all that you've heard is just the usual gossip, invented to injure feelings rather than illuminate truth.

When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.

In love there are two things - bodies and words.

Even as a young child, I was a lover of books and of the spaces in which, as indeed in a sacred temple, books might safely reside.

When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer.

The third man in the ring makes boxing possible.