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I always love novels that open up a subject to me - like raising a window to a beautiful, mysterious world outside.

I always have a book that I use that somehow inspires my novels.

When I'm working on a novel of my own, I try to read mostly nonfiction, although sometimes I break down and peek at something else.

Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.

I do novels a bit backward. I look for a situation, a milieu first, and then I wait to see who walks into it.

I'm always reading several books at the same time, depending on how deeply engrossed in it I am, if it's fiction and if it captures me.

My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life.

Sometimes a book influences me because it winds me up. There'll be something that gets under my skin and makes me think that I can do better.

For me, writing a novel goes on for years, and the solitude goes on, too. It tends to swallow me at times. I know it's a problem when my husband sends the dog in to retrieve me.