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My purpose as a writer is to communicate in such a way as to challenge the thinking of readers and touch their hearts.

What is important to me is that when I write something, people listen to me. I provide my wisdom to people, whether they agree or not.

In my position you have to read when you want to write and to talk when you would like to read.

By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.

It is insight into human nature that is the key to the communicator's skill. For whereas the writer is concerned with what he puts into his writings, the communicator is concerned with what the reader gets out of it. He therefore becomes a student of how people read or listen.

Writing is incidental to my primary objective, which is spinning a good yarn. I view myself as a storyteller more than a writer. The story - and hence the extensive research that goes into each one of my books - is much more important than the words that I use to narrate it.

I concentrate on the lives of individuals whom the reader comes to know and feel with intimately.

I talk to my readers on social networking sites, but I never tell them what the book is about. Writing is lonely, so from time to time I talk to them on the Internet. It's like chatting at a bar without leaving your office. I talk with them about a lot of things other than my books.

Writers themselves benefit from all helpful information about their task and methods. Readers, in turn, can have both their understanding and appreciation of literature enhanced by information about the writer's work.

If I think of a reader while I am writing, the only reader who really matters for me is my wife. It's most important to me that she likes what I write.