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Writing fiction was a way to take the ideas that troubled me or confused me and put them under pressure.

I had novels to write, so I wrote them.

I didn't plan to write YA - I had a story that simply wasn't working as a straight-up fantasy novel.

I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay, rather than the novel.

I wasn't sitting around years ago thinking, 'I really want to write a novel.'

I knew I wanted to write novels, but I could not finish what I started. The closer I got, the more ways I'd find to screw it up.

I'm glad I wrote them when I did because I think if I were to write my first novel now, it would be a different book, and it may not be the book that everybody wants to read. But if I were given a red pen now, and I went back... I'd take that thing apart.

I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself.

My second, third and fourth novels were mistakes, essentially.

I'd never written a novel before, and I wrote a novel, and that turned out OK.