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I always love novels that open up a subject to me - like raising a window to a beautiful, mysterious world outside.

Novels give you the opportunity to create a whole world. Because you create people, you make them talk... You decide who they are, whether they live or die. It's the closest thing to feeling like a god that you can come to.

My novels are all ideas.

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

My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life.

Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.

I think of my novels as entertainments.

I write the kinds of novels I like to read, where the setting is rendered with love and care.

Many people have told me that my books read like novels. Perhaps this is because, when I write, I feel I am really there, so strong is my feeling for my subject. On occasion, I have been so moved by the events I have been describing that I have felt like crying.

I was always writing the books that I wanted to write, books that demanded to be written at the time. But, like most writers, you start off feeling your way.