I think that sense of surprise, that you don't know where something is going, or what's going to happen, even as you write, that you're making it up as you go along - that's important to me. It's not a question of shock or surprise in a gimmicky way. It's that as you read, you become more deeply into something and into what happens, and become more involved and engaged, you're learning something or you're appreciating something or seeing something differently - that's what's surprising.

People are less focused on the story, and more on how the story is told.

I'm very interested in animal behavior, and the relationship of human beings to other animal behavior.

I think that sense of surprise, that you don't know where something is going, or what's going to happen, even as you write, that you're making it up as you go along - that's important to me. It's not a question of shock or surprise in a gimmicky way. It's that as you read, you become more deeply into something and into what happens, and become more involved and engaged, you're learning something or you're appreciating something or seeing something differently - that's what's surprising.

If I have to work on something for too long, then it must be wrong. At a certain point, if I've worked on a sentence for about an hour, then I realize that it's probably not the right sentence and means I'm trying to make something fit that's ungainly.

People in the upper classes can just as easily be indifferent to their own body, or treat themselves as badly, as people who don't have the money. There are always differences among differences.

Without curiosity a writer is dead.