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When authors who write literary fiction begin to write screenplays, everybody assumes that's the end. Here's another who's never going to write well again.

I believe that if it were possible to scrap the whole of existing literature, all writers would find themselves inevitably producing something very close to SF ... No other form of fiction has the vocabulary of ideas and images to deal with the present, let alone the future.

However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously.

A writer loses possession of her work as soon as it's reaches its audience. Each reader brings his own experience and prejudice and imagination to the work. Television adaptation just goes one step further, and the novelist has to learn to let go.

When a book goes well, it abandons me. I am the most abandoned writer in the world.

For every prescriptive idea about the craft of fiction, there's at least one writer who makes a virtue of the contrary.

Every writer secretly hopes that what he or she has written will endure.

Every writer hopes his or her book will be its own thing.

Writing is such a solitary thing, so it's nice, when I'm discouraged, to see people still have such faith in fiction.

Being a fiction writer makes you someone who works with irresponsibility.