The lives great artists live and the books they write are two very different things.

I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.

Virginia Woolf came along in the early part of the century and essentially said through her writing, yes, big books can be written about the traditional big subjects. There is war. There is the search for God. These are all very important things.

One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.

The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws.

But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there's another.

I seem to produce a novel approximately once every three years.