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There is more to be pondered in the grain and texture of life than traditional fiction allows. The work of essayists is vital precisely because it permits and encourages self-knowledge in a way that is less indirect than fiction, more open and speculative.

Literature at its fullest takes human nature as its theme. That's the kind of writing that interests me.

The thematic, psychological, and cultural concerns of a writer are more relevant than whatever literary mode he or she chooses to deal with in any given novel.

Realism isn't something most people associate with the fantasy genre, yet it's an essential element of great fantasy writing.

My feeling is that writing Fantasy should be harder - not easier - than writing any other kind of fiction.

As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies, as a form of abstract thought. I don't wish to deny the uses of the intellect, but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere.

In an essay, you have the outcome in your pocket before you set out on your journey, and very rarely do you make an intellectual or psychological discovery. But when you write fiction, you don't know where you are going - sometimes down to the last paragraph - and that is the pleasure of it.

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

When you are a novelist, you are used to making a narrative do what you want.

In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays.