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The whole purpose of writing a book is to be understood - if other people write about you, they try to guess why you did things, or they hear things from other people.

The first book you write because of the way it makes you feel. The second one you can't help but wonder how it's going to make the reader feel.

I can't tell you any more than any other writer can tell you why they write, and I don't know what my influences are.

There are two questions that you ask yourself as a writer, and one of them is, 'But why?' The question that takes the book forward is, 'What if? What if x y or z happened? How would those characters react?'

The difficulty of writing a second novel is directly proportional to how successful the first novel was, it seems.

I always have the impression that I write the same book.

I remain convinced that the most valuable use of time for a newly published author is to write a second book that's even better than the first, and a third that's better than the second, and on and on.

One of the humbling things about having written more than one novel is the sense that every time you begin, that new empty page does not know who you are.

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

The writers who have the deepest influence on one are those one reads in ones more impressionable, early life, and often it is the more youthful works of those writers that leave the deepest imprint.