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I am in the interesting position of being sometimes skimmed by the critics and called literature and sometimes called historical fiction.

It's always fun to talk about a novel.

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

Sometimes literary critics review the book they wanted you to write, not the book you wrote, and that's very irksome.

Many of the critics today get airline tickets, hotel accommodation, bags, beautiful photographs, gifts and other expenses paid by the distributors, and then are supposed to write serious articles about the movie.

When I wrote 'Lord of the Flies' - I had no idea it would even get published.

Good fiction must be entertaining, but what makes fiction special - and True - is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a larger message.

In the finest critics one hears the full cry of the human. They tell one why it matters to read.

I don't read a great deal of fiction, to my shame, other than the classics.

Writers have to be observant. Every nuance, every inflection in a voice, the quality of air, even - they all get mixed up in this soup of the story developing in our minds.