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The characters are always the focal point of a book for me, whether I'm writing or reading. I may enjoy a book that has an intriguing mystery or a good plot, but to become one of my real favorites, it has to have great characters.

I could never write a book where the point-of-view character was a short person, because I just can't imagine what that's like.

There's always an anxiety about playing literary characters because one of the great joys of reading books is that you can create your own vision of things.

I discovered you can get closer to a character's thoughts and feelings in a book than in a film.

I never think of the reader. I am curious about things; I need to find out, so off I go.

I'm not really a good reader. What I mean is, I think I'm not one of those people who can read a story and analyze it just like that.

Part of me becomes the characters I'm writing about. I think readers feel like they are there, the way I am, as a result.

I'm an avid reader myself, and what any one reader accesses at any one time is very powerful and personal to them. Clearly you can't even begin to touch that. A novel is a singular vision, and then a myriad of readers have their own experience of that.

I know when I go and see a writer, the first thing I think to myself is, 'Are they the character in the book?' You just can't help it; it's the way people are.

I love novels where not much 'happens' but where the interest is in the ideas and analyses of characters.