The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone.

I sometimes feel I'm a sort of cult writer, rather than a mainstream writer, in that those who like my stuff like it a lot, but the appeal is not that broad.

You cannot combine being a movie star with not being a movie star.

I want incremental improvements. There's the record of all the revolutionary and violent change and extremism in general - it's dreadful.

Writers spend too much time among dead things. I thought that was profound and actually true, that you're trying to pump life into something that is inanimate. You see what a sort of audacious thing it is to move these sort of imaginary people around in a very stylized and patterned world.

You can't sort of write the novel as if you're taking dictation from heaven.

The literary interview won't tell you what a writer is like. Far more compellingly to some, it will tell you what a writer is like to interview.