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Authors are influenced by everything they've ever read. If you've read widely enough, it helps you create your own mix.

Each book tends to have its own identity rather than the author's. It speaks from itself rather than you. Each book is unlike the others because you are not bringing the same voice to every book. I think that keeps you alive as a writer.

In a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read.

But I do think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can be wrong about their own books, they can often learn about their own books.

I am a big believer in the fact that all authors really write only one book.

I sometimes think that, since I started writing biographies, I've had more of a life in books than I have had in my real life.

It isn't as if a writer merely records life as it unfurls. Reality does not automatically transcribe as literature; real people are not shapely, compelling characters to be harvested. Charming facts and sharp observations rarely slide seamlessly into whatever narrative is at hand.

The only thing that's authentic about what a writer writes is his work.

I like to read novels where the author seems knowledgeable, like someone you know you could walk calmly next to through a complicated situation, and he or she would be alive to its meaning and ironies. And you wouldn't even have to mention them out loud to each other.