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Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

Writing is an extremely rewarding and humbling process, and I've learned to go with it, that even if it feels absolutely impossible, I will find a way to tell the next story.

If you don't like my book, write your own. If you don't think you can write a novel, that ought to tell you something. If you think you can, do. No excuses. If you still don't like my novels, find a book you do like.

I just realized quite early on that I'm not going to be the type who can write a novel every two years. I think you need to feel an urgency about the act. Otherwise, when you read it, you feel no urgency, either. So I don't write unless I really feel I need to, and that's a luxury.

Write because you love it and not because it is something that you think you should do. Always write about something or somebody you know about - something that you feel deeply and passionately about. Never try and force it.

If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it.

You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life; the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.

I have very little choice. If I don't write, I feel dreadful. So I write.

You're a reader as well as a writer, so write what you'd want to read.