It’s a rare reader who doesn’t go to the novel looking for a kind of encouragement to live.

The characters write the plot. Their natures do.

I must love big novels, because that's what I've written. It takes a while before you begin to breathe the air the characters breathe.

It’s a rare reader who doesn’t go to the novel looking for a kind of encouragement to live.

I feel like someone after a deluge being asked to describe the way it was before the flood while I'm still plucking seaweed out of my hair.

Literature is humanity talking to itself.

I wanted to incorporate everything, understand everything, because time is cruel and nothing stays the same.