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Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write.

Truth is stranger than nonfiction. And life is too interesting to be left to journalists. People have stories, but journalists have 'takes,' and it's their takes that usually win out when the stories are too complicated or, as happens, not complicated enough.

I think, as journalists, we sometimes are afraid to enter into the emotional lives and the complications of the lives of the people we write about - we don't really have the space and the room to deal with those things. But as a novelist, that's precisely what you're writing about.

It's the nature of journalism to need to be close to your subjects. And either you're able to be tough on them, which a lot of us are, or you get in bed with them, and some people do.

In journalism just one fact that is false prejudices the entire work. In contrast, in fiction one single fact that is true gives legitimacy to the entire work. That's the only difference, and it lies in the commitment of the writer. A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe in it.

As a novelist, you deepen your characters as you go, adding layers. As a reporter, you try to peel layers away: observing subjects enough to get beneath the surface, re-questioning a source to find the facts. But these processes aren't so different.

Many fiction writers write for the critics or for themselves; they forget the common reader. I never do. I don't think journalism clashes with my fiction; on the contrary, it helps enormously.

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

The training of a journalist, of working with words for thousands of hours, is extraordinarily useful for a fiction writer.

Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction.