Quote

God gets the great stories. Novelists must make do with more mundane fictions.

My temperament is not geared to that of a novelist.

The main impetus for being a writer is thinking, 'I could invent another world. I'm not terribly keen on this one.'

Novels give you the opportunity to create a whole world. Because you create people, you make them talk... You decide who they are, whether they live or die. It's the closest thing to feeling like a god that you can come to.

He invented this idea of telling the life story of a great writer through becoming his characters and becoming him. It was such a pleasure and I thought we must find another writer.

If a novelist tells you something she knows or thinks, and you believe her, that is not because either of you think she is God, but because she is doing her work - as a novelist.

To become a novelist, the most crucial thing one must do is read, read and read again - gradually you begin to think like a writer. Ideas are not found - they are shaped.

New fiction writers are a special breed in my estimation, and I never dreamed that so many people would be interested, but I remember being led by God.

The same tools that make any writer good, plus a cheerful willingness to suspend belief.

Life is God's novel. Let him write it.