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Literature at its fullest takes human nature as its theme. That's the kind of writing that interests me.

I love novels where not much 'happens' but where the interest is in the ideas and analyses of characters.

I'd always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s as substitutes for experience.

There are a lot of authors in the world, so it's difficult to find a unique niche to present your take on things. That is always a challenge for any author.

I've summarized dozens of books in my literary career; it's become rather second nature.

I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit.

A great literary work can be completely, completely unpredictable. Which can sometimes make them very hard to read, but it gives them a great originality.

Finding people who get enormous pleasure from reading books is a more and more unusual experience, and so writers just so much want to be heard.

The lives of most authors - even, or perhaps especially, the great ones - are necessarily a catalogue of tedious inwardness and cloistered composition. Globe-trotting Hemingways and brawling Christopher Marlowes are the exception, not the rule.

Novels are one of the few remaining areas of narrative storytelling where one person does almost all of the creative heavy lifting.