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I want prose fiction to be recognized as that, and I'm not interested in writing as it becomes more personal.

I think Jane Austen builds suspense well in a couple of places, but she squanders it, and she gets to the endgame too quickly. So I will be working on those things.

I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.

I don't like to make strong statements. I want to write strong novels... I keep my deep, radical things for my novels.

I'm a successful novelist, and I've been a lucky one, so I don't want to cry the poor mouth. Writing has never been easy.

I try to write about things, places, events, and phenomena I know about personally. That helps make the novels more genuine.

Novels are not about expressing yourself, they're about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic. Self-expression? Go and ring a bell in a yard if you want to express yourself.

And write what you love - don't feel pressured to write serious prose if what you like is to be funny.

I wasted a lot of years working on my writing and very grandly saying, 'And now... My Novel!,' which would soon be reduced to a short story, then to a paragraph.

Sometime early in life, I developed the notion - one which I have never relinquished - that writing a novel is the very finest thing a person can do.