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When I start getting close to the end of a novel, something registers in the back of my mind for the next novel, so that I usually don't write, or take notes. And I certainly don't begin. I just allow things to percolate for a while.

I do novels a bit backward. I look for a situation, a milieu first, and then I wait to see who walks into it.

Usually I decide on what it is I'm writing next by the books I'm reading.

So, whenever I'm writing, I'm writing in the presence of all the other books I've read and I think we all are.

Novels, in my experience, are slow in coming, and once I've begun them I know I have years rather than months of work ahead of me.

I'm a novelist, that's how I make my livelihood, and I concentrate on the novels.

While writing a novel, I don't read anything new in fiction. I am too engrossed.

To me, novels are a trip of discovery, and you discover things that you don't know and you assume that many of your readers don't know, and you try to bring them to life on the page.

I don't very often read novels.