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.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Novels are a kind of experiment in selfhood, for the reader as well as for the author.
I am trying to write novels for properly clever people, but I also want them to be proper novels that also stick in a person's mind and have an atmosphere about them.
Readers would email me and say, 'Please write a novel about so-and-so,' but it has to come from yourself and not so much from your readership.
To me, novels are a trip of discovery, and you discover things that you don't know and you assume that many of your readers don't know, and you try to bring them to life on the page.
Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.
My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do.
I don't like to make strong statements. I want to write strong novels... I keep my deep, radical things for my novels.
Writing a novel is an intense and lonely business, but you have the reward at the end of a very direct dialogue between you and the reader.
All writing is an act of self-exploration. Even a grocery list says something about you; how much more does a novel say?
Novelists are in the business of constructing consciousness out of words, and that's what we all do, cradle to grave. The self is a story we tell.