To really be centered and to really work well and to think about the kinds of things that I need to think about, I need to spend large amounts of time alone.

There's an expectation these days that novels - like any other consumer product - should be made on a production line, with one dropping from the conveyor belt…

Well, a novel does acquire a certain kind of richness when you work on it for a long time that can't really be faked.

The trick of creating character is to try to see all people, even unsympathetic ones, without projecting one's own personality and values on them.

Ideas came swarming through her, and like many people who labour in the obsession of solitude, she lacked the detachment to challenge them.

By circumstance and perhaps also by inclination, I think in complete intellectual isolation. To expect others to help me think seems to me almost like expectin…

Go to work on an egg.