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Since I spend such a long time making each book, I only choose books that I'm really interested in and that I really love.

But I don't read a lot of fiction. I prefer the nonfiction stuff.

Favorite subject? I would have to say creative writing.

I read little nonfiction, but I have no boundaries about the fiction I relish. The only unfailing criterion is that I can hitch my heart to the imagined world and read on.

I am in the interesting position of being sometimes skimmed by the critics and called literature and sometimes called historical fiction.

Literature at its fullest takes human nature as its theme. That's the kind of writing that interests me.

Of all the species of literary composition, perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the materials of which it is composed, which is wanting in general history.

For me, any book I'm writing is also a chance to get in and research and read and learn things that I maybe only knew a little bit about before.

With literary biographies, you're either shelved with other biographies or next to your subject's fiction.