Murder and hate are as deeply buried in the human heart as love, perhaps more so, and in truth they're rather entwined, and if you tried to separate them, you'd be missing something important and human.

There are words and words and none mean anything. And then one sentence means everything.

I do not share the pessimism of the age about the novel. They are one of our greatest spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual inventions. As a species it is story that distinguishes us, and one of the supreme expressions of story is the novel. Novels are not content. Nor are they are a mirror to life or an explanation of life or a guide to life. Novels are life, or they are nothing.

You have to attempt to find new forms that will force you to write freshly and better and hopefully more truthfully.

A good book ... leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.

In the end you're not made or broken by prizes. Your relationship is with your readers, not a prize, and you just have to keep on honoring that.

What you're constantly seeking isn't a style, but a transparency between your soul and the words. And your soul is ever in flux, so therefore you have to constantly find new forms of words that might be able to register these changes in the soul.