Quote

Nothing in the last few years has dazzled me more than Hilary Mantel's 'Wolf Hall,' which blew the top of my head straight off. I've read it three times, and I'm still trying to figure out how she put that magnificent thing together.

I wasn't sitting around years ago thinking, 'I really want to write a novel.'

I think you get so wrapped up in the book you're currently writing, it's hard to think about anything else. But I know as soon as I'm done with this book, I'll move on to something else.

I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

The audience may not have felt it was right, and the author may have felt a little upset, but every part I've played I've twisted around in my mind until I've made it into something of my own. Looking back over it, I didn't deliberately sit down and plan like that, but it does read like it.

By about chapter six of 'Wolf Brother,' I was having so much fun that I knew I wanted it to go on and I couldn't tell Torak's story in one book. So I sat down, and it took me about a week to plan in broad outline all six books.

When I read 'Room,' I absolutely loved it, and I thought I knew how to make it.

When I began to write seriously, 40 years ago now, my chosen form was the novel.

Virginia Woolf was wrong. You do not need a room of your own to write.

I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.