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People who read fiction are different from other people because they are people who are interested in an imagined world.

Everyone assumes that novelists are smarter and more interesting. They're generally smarter and more interesting, but they're often very short. So it kind of cancels all the smart and interesting stuff out.

I try to read writers who are better than me because it inspires me to be better.

The strength of fiction is not in reading about yourself, but in reading about other people.

Personally, I read fiction, in part, because I get to spend time with people who aren't my people.

Writing and reading fiction is, I think, a human effort to make sense of the world.

I believe that, like most writers, my personality comes through in the fiction. So in that respect my writing can't be like any other author's really.

Fiction is the best way I know how to think something through.

I find my readers to be very smart, and there is no reason to write dumb.

A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual.