I have never begun a novel which wasn't going to stretch me further than I had ever stretched before.

Good writing of course requires talent, and no one can teach you to have talent.

Then I fell in love and everything went to hell.

I thought I would be an organic chemist. I went off to university, and when I couldn't understand the chemistry lectures I decided that I would be a zoologist, because zoologists seemed like life-loving people.

The great thing about using the past is that it gives you the most colossal freedom to invent. The research is necessary, of course, but no one writes a novel to dramatically illustrate what everybody already knows.

My greatest pleasure is to invent. My continual mad ambition is to make something true and beautiful that never existed in the world before.

I'm always the one with the activist friends. I've been an activist very little.