Statistically, you don't have much chance of becoming president if you're not tall and fairly handsome or at least conventional-looking.

Statistically, you don't have much chance of becoming president if you're not tall and fairly handsome or at least conventional-looking.

I've never really understood that whole thing of writers avoiding other writers' novels while they're working on their own.

It seems to me that the basic plot of all historical novels is a romance swept aside by history.

I always save a huge book for a flight, because then you read it at both airports and on the plane and by the time you get home you're a quarter of the way through and it doesn't feel so unmanageable any more.

I never really have blank page syndrome. I don't get blocked. I have a plan for my novel before I start which, although incomplete, probably contains enough material for several novels by a quieter kind of writer. And I try to get my arms around that material and see where it takes me.

I read 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Madox Ford again every so often.