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A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

Novel writing is solitary work.

Writing is a solitary endeavor, but not a lonely one. When you write, your world is populated by the characters you invent, and you feel those people filling your life.

To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is to execute them. That's a very romantic project. Like Edvard Munch's strange dreamlike canvases where people are stylized, like 'The Scream.' Munch must have had that vision in a dream, he never saw it.

There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.

Most writers spend their lives standing a little apart from the crowd, watching and listening and hoping to catch that tiny hint of despair, that sliver of malice, that makes them think, 'Aha, here is the story.'

I have a curious background for someone who turns out to be a writer.

I don't believe that a writer does something wonderful spontaneously. I believe it's the result of years of living, of study, reading, his very personality and temperament. At one particular moment, all these come together and the artist 'expresses' himself.

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.