Originality is a concept possible only to a limited viewpoint.

The absurdist stuff wasn't terribly popular at the time I was doing it.

I'm quite influenced in this by one of my heroes, Montaigne, who thought a man's real task was to render as honest an account of himself as he could.

A novel is often a longer process in handling self-doubt.

It takes me a long time to get with a landscape. It took me 20 years before I wrote anything about Ibiza, and I haven't written about Oregon yet, although I've been there 20 years - possibly I'm almost due.

But science perhaps is very difficult without faith. Also there is no simple way of saying now we have science, we don't need faith anymore.

Wherever you go in the galaxy, you can find a food business, a house-building business, a war business, a peace business, a governing business, and so forth. And, of course, a God business, which is called 'religion,' and which is a particularly reprehensible line of endeavor.