I project myself so deeply into the characters in novels that I'm not thinking about my own life.

When you're young, you keep reading new writers and you keep changing your mind about how you ought to sound.

We're outsiders, and so when we walk through the city, we're there and not there at the same time, participating and observing simultaneously.

The joke is the purest, most essential form of storytelling. Every word has to count.

I've found that writing novels is an all-absorbing experience - both physical and mental - and I have to do it every day in order to keep the rhythm, to keep myself focused on what I'm doing.

Stories happen only to those who are able to tell them, someone once said. In the same way, perhaps, experiences present themselves only to those who are able to have them.

When I start, I have a feeling for the characters, and maybe the shape of the story. Sometimes I might even have the last sentence in mind. But, no book I've ever written has ever ended the way I thought it would. Characters disappear, others come forward. Once you start writing, everything changes.