I think it's really boring, from the point of view of the novelist, to write about yourself. Tedious. But that's very hard to explain to people who really don't believe in the possibility of invention.

I don't separate my books into historical novels and the rest. To me, they're all made-up worlds, and both kinds are borne out of curiosity, some investigation into the past.

I have written a memoir here and there, and that takes its own form of selfishness and courage. However, generally speaking, I have no interest in writing about my own life or intruding in the privacy of those around me.

People do not love those whose eyes show that they are somewhere else

If you ever read one of my books I hope you'll think it looks so easy. In fact, I wrote those chapters 20 times over, and over, and over, and that if you want to write at a good level, you'll have to do that too.

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

I had known loneliness before, and emptiness upon the moor, but I had never been a NOTHING, a nothing floating on a nothing, known by nothing, lonelier and colder than the space between the stars. It was more frightening than being dead.