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I never try to give a message in my books. It's about living with characters long enough to hear their voices and let them tell me the story. Sometimes I would love to have a happy ending, and it doesn't happen because the character or the story leads me in another direction.

In my books I try to tell a good story, not give messages.

I do have screenplays I've written that never saw the light of day, but I don't usually go back to them. When I've told a story, I want to tell another story.

I never try to convey a message, I just want to tell a story. Why that story in particular? I have no idea, but I have learned to surrender to the muse. I become obsessed with a theme or with certain stories; they haunt me for years, and finally, I write them.

As a writer, my main objective is to tell the story urgently - as if whispering it into one ear - and to know the characters intimately.

The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form.

When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.

I just try to write the best story I can, a story I would love to read, and hope that readers feel the same.

It's not easy to tell a story about writers and make that feel like a complete story and an interesting story.

I'm a writer. I just love telling stories.