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I'm mostly drawn to narratives that are difficult for me to visualize.

I much prefer a plotted novel to a novel that is really conceptual.

I can't do fiction unless I visualize what's going on. When I began to write science fiction, one of the things I found lacking in it was visual specificity. It seemed there was a lot of lazy imagining, a lot of shorthand.

I don't think anyone has written a great graphic novel.

Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.

I can never read this book, just like I can never see a movie that I wrote a screenplay for. I can read it and see it physically, but I can't accurately judge it. I'm too close to it. If I read it ten times I'll have ten different reactions.

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 never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself.