It's like standing on the edge of a cliff. This is especially true of the first draft. Every day you're making up the earth you're going to stand on.

Living where I live New York I don't think anyone's going to make a fuss. But it is more deeply satisfying because it's of your place and means that you aren't forgotten; someone's noticed what you have been doing with your life.

I think that thing about the destruction of the world is there all the time, it's there every day when we look out the window.

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

Writers, at least writers of fiction, are always full of anxiety and worry.

And it's always possible that you will not get a nice review. So - and that's enraging of course, to get a bad review, you can't talk back, and it's sort of shaming in a way.

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.