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I don't very often read novels.

Nothing good gets written without the writer suffering along the way, in my opinion. Writing should be a pleasure, but unless you feel almost broken many, many times in the journey to a novel, you haven't pushed yourself hard enough.

I'm not the most prolific writer in the world, and, sadly, writing a novel involves a lot of effort.

I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.

It is a commonplace to say that novelists should be judged by their work rather than their private lives or their publicly expressed views. And writers, of course, subscribe enthusiastically to this idea.

Writing novels is largely about endurance and patience. I take a lot of breaks, hit walls, and go do something else while I think things through. But I do it every day, and I try to treat it as a job, something that is not dictated by whimsy or muses.

Novelists are no more moral or certain than anybody else; we are ideologically adrift, and if we are any good then our writing will live in several places at once. That is both our curse and our charm.

Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.