Quote

A sense of place is very important in writing.

Though it may not seem like it, I never try to write about a place, per se; it's always, first and last, about story. Story is everything. Story and a bit of attitude.

If my characters travel somewhere, I generally write about a place I know to give the scenes more authenticity.

It's hard to say if actual places really affect the way you write.

I am very interested in place, and the influences of place on characters.

I tend to write about towns because that's what I remember best. You can put a boundary on the number of characters you insert into a small town. I tend to create a lot of characters, so this is a sort of restraint on the character building I do for a novel.

Big stories have lots of angles, and you have to decide what part of that story you want to address.

Love of place is one of the characteristics I enjoy most about novelists.

Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary in spite of everything.

If you ask me, the place that a story happens is as equal character. It's almost like an ecological viewpoint: These people are living in this piece of land, and in this piece of land in this time this is possible. For me, I almost think location first. It's time first - what year is it - then where are we, and then who is in it.