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There is something so hopeful about a diary, a journal, a new notebook, which Joan Didion and Virginia Woolf both wrote about. A blog. Perhaps we all are waiting for someone to discover us.

I'm sometimes mystified by people who keep diaries. I never thought of my existence as being that important.

Whenever I write a part, I think there's this person somewhere in the world that this part is specifically for, and all I have to do is go searching to find that particular individual.

If you read somebody's diary, you get what you deserve.

I've thrown away lots of my old diaries - you never know who might get their hands on them. But I have kept a few notes on the good old days.

The whole point of diaries is that other people find them and read what you've put. I did once take to writing my inner thoughts on the computer at the end of other things I was writing and ended up faxing four pages of hideous stuff to my accountant so I don't do that now.

My joy as a writer is circling around and around and down and down to find out who the real person is.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

Obviously, my name is known now, but I don't think people generally tend to recognize authors very much. People like J. K. Rowling maybe, Gillian Flynn might be recognized, but I reckon she could walk by me on the street, and I wouldn't know who she was.