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About my books, that's all that I think the public has, in its normal way, to know. My private life is, by definition, private.

There is a huge difference between writing a book, which is a private activity I engage in with myself, and wanting to engage in overly intimate personal conversations with strangers, which I pretty much never want to do.

I talk to my readers on social networking sites, but I never tell them what the book is about. Writing is lonely, so from time to time I talk to them on the Internet. It's like chatting at a bar without leaving your office. I talk with them about a lot of things other than my books.

I'm famously secretive about my work. Nobody reads my books till they're finished.

There's something nice and intimate about having a book. You know that someone's actually gone on this journey. You know that someone has actually researched and reported all these things. You can see and hear their tone in what they chosen to include and what they haven't.

I would love to be in public one day and see someone reading my book. I think that would be so ridiculously cool.

I haven't read a book in a very, very long time because, when I'm writing, I don't like to see other people's work. I don't want to see something great and not be able to use it, and I don't want to have any subconscious influences.

I still want to give my public, such as it is, a book a year.

My books should feel like you're getting a peek into a private world: a diary no one was meant to read. As soon as I start thinking, 'This book is going to be published,' my drawing becomes calculated and deliberate. It's one of the ways I trick myself.

One of the things that probably drew me to writing was that it was something you could get on with by yourself. Publishing means going public. But the actual activity could scarcely be more invisible. And private.