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Although a novel takes place in the larger world, there's always some drive in it that is entirely personal - even if you don't know it while you're doing it.

I always say that, for me, writing a book is like a wacky Greyhound bus trip - I know where I'm starting and where I'll end up, but I have no idea what will happen along the way.

There are books all around me... I don't read as much as I used to, but I always have a book or two going.

I often turn to my books when my own writing is having a hard time.

I try not to recommend too many books, frankly, because I think there's a certain synchronicity that happens when people discover books.

I myself don't know what makes my books work. I enter a bookstore and I'm frankly overwhelmed by the number of books in most of them, and I know people are buying mine.

A book is a journey: It's a thing you agree to go on with somebody, and I think every reader's experience of a book is going to be different.

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 always want my books to reach a positive point in the end.

I've seen people around me write books, and somehow they're always in the center of everything that happened; they were the one who made it happen. There's been a lot of those books that didn't really interest me much.