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Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.

Good fiction must be entertaining, but what makes fiction special - and True - is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a larger message.

In ages past, there was less of a dichotomy between good literature and fun reads. In the twentieth century, I think, it split apart, so that you had serious fiction and genre fiction.

It's perceived as an accolade to be published as a 'literary' writer, but, actually, it's pompous and it's fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself.

If I'm a genre writer, I'm at the edge. In the end, they do work like genre fiction. You have a hero, there's a love interest, there's always a chase, there's fighting of some kind. You don't have to do that in a novel. But you do in a genre novel.

Whereas fiction is a continual discovery of what one wants to say, what one feels, what one means, and is, in that sense, a performance art, biography requires different skills - research and organization.

It's never really easy to be successful as a writer when you're trying to write literary fiction. You've already limited your readership limited by that choice.

Fiction is the thing I esteem most in my own work; I feel that, even if it's no good, only I could have written those books.

With each book, you get better as a writer. There is no back door to the industry. Read in the genre you want to write, as the more you read, the better you will get as an author.

Television and film are such streamlined story mediums. You can't really meander about, whereas a novel is an interior experience.