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The great thing about being a writer is that you have a long, perhaps frighteningly long time in which to do your work.

The great thing about being a writer is that you are always recreating yourself.

The thing I love about being a novelist is that with each project, you invent a new world. You approach it with a different set of aesthetic and structural ideas, and you grapple with a different series of problems in figuring out how to tell the story. And yet there are certain concerns that stay constant.

I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing.

Novelists seem to fall into two distinct categories - those that plan and those that just see where it takes them. I am very much the former category.

Being a novelist is hard for anyone - male or female. You don't get to quit your day job.

I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.

The best thing about being a writer is it gives you readers who understand your deepest feelings and fears.

Especially if you're endeavouring daily to write your own books, you read with a degree of - well, it's hard to forget you're a writer when you're reading.

I think of myself as a serious professor who, during the weekend, writes novels.