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I'm very unhappy about my entire life if my writing is going wrong.

Everything can be going well, but if I'm not writing, I'm not happy. When I'm writing well, I'm like a different person.

I couldn't be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because I'm pretty optimistic.

I never dreamt I could be an author when I grew up. It just didn't occur to me, because I thought you had to be a) academic, so go to university, things like that, and I didn't think I was clever, or b) dead because I just assumed all the authors in the library were dead.

I decided if I couldn't be a writer, my life would be miserable. I had this imaginary room of references to all the books I had read, a kind of bubble, in which I lived.

I felt like I was never going to be a great writer. I felt like I was going to be a good writer at best. I wanted to be great at something.

I feel like a very lucky person. From the time I was young, I had a dream of becoming a writer. Now that dream has come true, and I am able to make my living doing something I really love.

The whole excitement for writing anything is quite intense. And for a day or two, you think you've done everything extremely well. The problems start on the third day, and continues for the rest of your life.

Sadness was something I was thinking about in my life outside of writing, so it wormed itself into whatever I wrote.