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My feeling is that writing is, for me, a pathological condition. That could sound like a mystical experience, and it may be a mystical experience, but I have learnt just to go with it.

Writing is a very calming thing for me.

Outside of family, writing is essential. To me, it's like breathing.

Writing is sweat and drudgery most of the time. And you have to love it in order to endure the solitude and the discipline.

Writing is an incredibly creatively empowering experience for me. It is the place where nobody tries to control what I'm doing.

Writing is what I do. It's like breathing to me at a certain point, but if I couldn't write, I do like cooking.

Writing is a way of getting at the things most people would prefer to escape. Writing takes me to the center of life. That's my invitation to my readers as well.

I write in order to find out what I truly know and how I really feel about certain things. Writing requires me to go much deeper into my thoughts and memories than conversation does. Writing provides the solitude necessary to reflect on being in this world.

I think, as journalists, we sometimes are afraid to enter into the emotional lives and the complications of the lives of the people we write about - we don't really have the space and the room to deal with those things. But as a novelist, that's precisely what you're writing about.

Writing is a solitary profession; you are really alone when you write. Then the emotions become well shaped and distinct. But their transition into words must be done deliberately and with rigid artistry.