When you write a novel, you never have to be in the service of the reader. My only concern with my books is that the world that's created be as logical and whole as possible.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
To me, novels are a trip of discovery, and you discover things that you don't know and you assume that many of your readers don't know, and you try to bring them to life on the page.
Also, most people read fiction as an escape - and I wonder whether my books aren't a bit too grounded in reality to reach the widest possible audience.
Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.
The whole purpose of writing a book is to be understood - if other people write about you, they try to guess why you did things, or they hear things from other people.
One of the biggest mistakes people make is to think that what you need to write a novel is imagination, creativity and a facility with words. Yes, you need all those things, but a novel is a highly complex organism that needs to be dealt with in quite a logical manner.
Fiction is the thing I esteem most in my own work; I feel that, even if it's no good, only I could have written those books.
I believe that it is my job not only to write books but to have them published. A book is like a child. You have to defend the life of a child.
Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.
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.
As a writer, you live in such isolation. It's hard to imagine your book has a life beyond you.