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It takes me about three years to write a book. They're very complex, and they take a lot of research, but also because the more popular your books get, the more popular you get, and people want to haul you off and look at you.

The whole purpose of writing a book is to be understood - if other people write about you, they try to guess why you did things, or they hear things from other people.

Writing a book is such a full-time job. If you're away for a few days, you have to start again.

Writing a book is very personal. It's a very personal relationship. A book will start with something as simple as two men talking about work. That gets the fire going. Sustaining that fire is the hard work. It takes attention and empathy to hone the characters.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

I think the greatest reward you get as a writer is finding that people who are reasonably receptive and intelligent have liked your book.

When you write a book for publication, you're writing it for other people to read.

The one thing you have to do if you write a book is put yourself in someone else's shoes. The reader's shoes. You've got to entertain them.

People are looking for inspiration, and my books are sometimes the vehicles of what people are looking for.

Writing books can be very individual - one might strike you as helpful that someone else found useless, or that you might not have appreciated at some other time in your life.