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Even now I try to make each page compelling for the readers to get absorbed in the book.

It's just a matter of writing the kind of book I enjoy reading. Something better be happening at the beginning, and then on every page after, or I get irritated.

I tell my students that with a 200-page novel, you are going to write 100 pages that don't make the final cut. See it as an opportunity, although it took me a while to enjoy that 'lost in the woods' feeling.

The books are like children in that having written one doesn't make writing the next one any easier, because it's a new set of problems and a new set of challenges with each one, and having dealt with one before means that you now know how to do it.

Each new book is a tremendous challenge.

Every time you finish a book, you have a terrible feeling that there's just never going to be another one. But fortunately, so far, the next one has always shown up.

One of the joys of a really good book is that you're so into the world of the book, you forget what you're looking at is words on a page.

For all I know, I am beginning with the ending. My page one can wind up a year later as page two hundred, if it's still even around.