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There's more fiction in my life than in books, so I don't bother with them.

With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me.

Non-fiction books have helped me enormously with lots of my books.

Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.

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.

This is what I have discovered - and it has been a gift in itself - that books live over and over again in different people's minds. That I might mean one thing as I write, but a reader's experiences will take it somewhere else. That is like a conversation, I think. It is a true connecting up.

I read autobiographies because there is too much fiction in my life.

People seem to read so much more nonfiction than fiction, and so it always gives me great pleasure to introduce a friend or family member to a novel I believe they'll cherish but might not otherwise have thought to pick up and read.

I'm always reading several books at the same time, depending on how deeply engrossed in it I am, if it's fiction and if it captures me.

Books in general are great, but I'm a fiction lover, and I will continue to do it.