I always think about the books I'm doing in pretty much the same way. I'm simply trying to write that particular novel as well as that particular novel can be written. I want to listen to what it is telling me, trying to figure out what it wants to do as much as what I want to do with it. There's a negotiation that's constant and ongoing between me and the material I'm working with, because I'm trying to listen to it.

Every writer must acknowledge and be able to handle the unalterable fact that he has, in effect, given himself a life sentence in solitary confinement. The ordinary world of work is closed to him - and that if he's lucky!

I write longer sentences than most of the others, maybe because I probably like Henry James more than they do.

Many fiction writers eventually want to feel that their work forms a single, unified entity.

Everyone wants to get better as they go along, but sometimes it's all you can do to stay consistent.

My first real breakthrough collided with the last months of Callaghan's Labour government, which had every intention of enjoying my success as much as I did.

Intellectual labor is a common technique for the avoidance of thinking.