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There's always a bit of fiction in everything that I write.

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.

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

I think that when you're writing fiction what you're doing is reflecting life as you see it, and putting down how you think and how other people think, and the sort of confusions that you don't normally like to admit to.

Because I'm such a creative person, and I've always got my nose in a book, I suppose it was only a matter of time before non-fiction turned into fiction again. But I never consciously set out to become a writer and I never thought I'd be doing the things I'm doing today.

Whether it's fiction or nonfiction, writing takes me to another world.

The idea that you're not a writer until you're published is a lie.

I think any writer keeps going back to some basic theme. Sometimes it's autobiographical. I guess it usually is.

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

Writing is just something I've always done. It's just kind of the reality of who I am.