I never feel I'm standing on solid ground, and I do write with a certain kind of trembling fear.

He would conclude that nothing was real except chance.

For one reason or another, I became a passionate reader when I was very little. As soon as I could read, I wanted to read.

I'm in constant inner dialogue with my father still.

I don't read reviews any more, but I'm told by my publisher who gives me an account of what people have been writing and it's been a very split kind of response.

I guess of all those novels, Don DeLillo's Falling Man is the one I like the best. I thought there were some beautiful things in that, particularly the relationship between the man who finds the briefcase and the woman whose husband owned the briefcase. It's quite a beautiful passage.

When young people say I want to be a novelist, I'd say, think very carefully about it. There will be very few rewards, you probably won't make any money, you probably won't become famous, and you will spend your whole life locked up in a room by yourself worrying about how to survive.