Every novel is an equal collaboration between the writer and the reader and it is the only place in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.

Becoming a writer is not a 'career decision' like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don't choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you're not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.

You have to really have a taste for being alone to be a writer.

You find the book in the process of doing it. That's the adventure of the job.

To care about words, to have a stake in what is written, to believe in the power of books - this overwhelms the rest, and beside it one's life becomes very small.

All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are.

I don't like that word [memoir]. Whenever my publishers have wanted to use it, I've told them to take it away.