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I don't know what makes a writer's voice. It's dozens of things. There are people who write who don't have it. They're tone-deaf, even though they're very fluent. It's an ability, like anything else, being a doctor or a veterinarian, or a musician.

I think all writers are mainly writing for themselves because I believe that most writers are writing based on a need to write. But at the same time, I feel that writers are, of course, writing for their readers, too.

I don't know about other writers, but for myself, to write I must be relatively quiet - it's very difficult to write with the telephone and the doorbell ringing and conversation going on; I'm not that good a writer to write through all that!

You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.

Writers - all writers, even screenwriters - like to make their mark. I don't think many screenwriters can write. They pass as writers.

Writing a song is much like being an author. Yes, we all have tools to write (everyone has a brain I hope!), but that doesn't all of a sudden make us best selling authors.

A writer has an inescapable voice. I think it's inherent in the nature, and I think that we don't control it anymore than we control what we want to write about.

People don't understand how much influence they can actually have on a writer, how much a writer's feelings can be hurt, how much they can deflect his course when they raise their voices like they did over highly personal books like 'Panama' or 'Bullet Park.'

Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.