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A house is very much like a portrait. I cannot disconnect houses from people. The thought of arrangement, the curves and straight lines. It gives an indication of the character at the heart of it.

The architect must get to know the people who will live in the planned house. From their needs, the rest inevitably follows.

Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can't. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what's going to happen in each chapter and each scene.

Big stories have lots of angles, and you have to decide what part of that story you want to address.

Designing a house is like doing a movie: Once you're done, you want to say, 'I hope you all enjoy it.'

I feel that when I began writing, I had a need to know more about the play before I got into it. I think that's the way I was thinking. But my actual experience is that the best way to find out what the structure is, is by writing the play out laterally. You just have got to be brave enough to start without knowing where you are going.

The level of detail and craft is something that's inscribed within the original design concept. And so when I begin to draw, I know what kind of detailing I want the building to have.

Consider your house from an aesthetic point of view.

Places are extremely important when writing a long story because place shapes a character.