The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The one test I have for every completed book is if I feel head over heels in love with the hero. If he hasn't stolen my heart from the previous hero, I know the book isn't right.
The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.
For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
My novels are often about people who are in love or attracted to each other.
At the end, the key thing is you've got to live with yourself. That's the real test. Everything else is fleeting.
Every book should have a romance.
Whenever I start a novel, I'm always looking for two things: a bit of science that makes me go 'what if?' and a piece of history that ends in a question mark.
I never know how a novel is going to end, because you don't really know what's going to be at the bottom of a novel until you excavate it.
Novels are a kind of experiment in selfhood, for the reader as well as for the author.
A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and its formal coherence. We must feel something crucial is at stake.