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When I look back over my novels what I find is that when I think I'm finished with a theme, I'm generally not. And usually themes will recur from novel to novel in odd, new guises.

Maybe a theme that touches all of my work is people reinventing themselves.

As an improviser, my nature is to take a theme and constantly rework it.

I don't consciously go out looking for themes. They attach themselves to me.

My abiding theme is separations.

I don't write for theme, but if you work closely on some guy fixing a sandwich or a window or a table or trying to visit an old teacher or walking down the street on which he was a boy, a theme, a human hope, will emerge.

Love's a recurring theme through my work.

I don't think you can replaces great themes. But I think people do want to hear fresh arrangements of them. They don't want to hear them played the same way all the time.

Periodically, I return to the classics for inspiration and refreshment.

Imagining themes that are specific to coating lines, shapes, shades, thoughts, the decoration of our homes and the objects of utility or pure pleasure, adapting its purpose in a material-specific way to metal or wood, marble or fabric - it is, without any doubt, an absorbing occupation.