I think about stories and their logic and wonder if there can be any such thing as simply "there is a book.

I erased the thought from my mind, but I couldn't undo the fact that I'd had the thought in the first place.

In some ways I'm a frustrated scientist or mathematician. The amount of times I've thought I'd go back to university and do theoretical physics because I like the big questions, but really I know now that that's not quite me. What's me is to do it in novels.

One of the biggest problems for beginning writers is this need to over-explain.

What folly takes light through ether to each eye from every horizon.

I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important.

Living for ever would be like marrying yourself, with no possibility of a divorce.