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To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength.

After so many books and so many years of writing, I have a good idea of my strengths and weaknesses. I love the process of writing and, if I allowed myself, I would write far too much every day. One weakness which I've struggled to overcome is my tendency to having my characters ruminate for pages.

I'm not sure I have the physical strength to undertake a novel.

A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.

Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary in spite of everything.

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.

Fiction is often most powerful when the author is exploring an issue - and not writing like a know-it-all who has the perfect answer.

Novels are a kind of experiment in selfhood, for the reader as well as for the author.

The impact of any particular writer on your own work is hard to discern.