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To me, novels are a trip of discovery, and you discover things that you don't know and you assume that many of your readers don't know, and you try to bring them to life on the page.

I give novels as gifts, and there is nothing I like to receive more as a gift.

A novel is a great act of passion and intellect, carpentry and largess. From the very beginning, I wrote to explain my own life to myself, and I invited readers who chose to make the journey with me to join me on the high wire.

If I give a book as a gift, it is invariably a children's book with beautiful artwork and a simple text. I adore the feel of them, the care taken in the artwork, and the high visual stimulation that sets off the simple but often powerful message the text conveys.

Novels give you the opportunity to create a whole world. Because you create people, you make them talk... You decide who they are, whether they live or die. It's the closest thing to feeling like a god that you can come to.

Part of the reason I wanted to write a novel was that in fiction I could do something that's difficult to do in real life, which is to dwell on the stark details of the experience without really needing to create that narrative of redemption.

Writing a novel is an intense and lonely business, but you have the reward at the end of a very direct dialogue between you and the reader.

Books are my very favorite gift to give. If you give a book to someone and they really respond to it, you feel you've actually changed their life in some way.

The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.

For me, an ideal novel is a dialogue between writer and reader, both a collaborative experience and an intimate exchange of emotions and ideas. The reader just might be the most powerful tool in a writer's arsenal.