I think jogging is bad for your health. All that pressure on the knees and back cannot be good for you.

What is difficult is the promotion, balancing the public side of a writer's life with the writing. I think that's something a lot of writers are having to face. Writers have become much more public now.

I don't think it's any fun, even if you are one of the most respected authors in the world like Margaret Atwood, to keep being nominated and not win.

It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to.

Throughout my career I've struggled to encourage people to read my books on a more metaphorical level. I'm less attached to my settings than, for example, Saul Bellow. The setting of a novel for me is just a part of the technique. I choose it at the end.

Even the solitude, I've actually grown to quite like... I do like the feeling of getting into my little car, knowing for the next couple of hours I'll have only the roads, the big gray sky and my daydreams for company.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.