The novelist is more like a pregnant woman who delivers her own child unaided. A messy procedure, with lots of groaning.

I bleed words.I dream in narrative. I live in infinite worlds.I befriend figmental characters.I wish on stars in other galaxies.I harvest stories from a brooding muse.I bloom under moonlight in hushed seclusion.I am a writer.

On Twitter, people who had read my book followed me and I could see what else they were reading, why they’d liked what I’d written and by the by, more about them than I’d ever...

No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist.

Being a novelist is not the sort of thing we can shut off. It infests every bit of us until we lose the boundary between Person and Writer, like one of those color charts where...

Sometimes I don’t even know why I’m writing what I’m writing…I’m just following these people around and taking notes.

Life is full of beautiful moments. Live your life to the fullest. And do what youlove.

On every page, confidence fights with self-doubt. Every sentence is an act of faith. Why would anybody want to do it?

On my website there’s a quote from the writer Anthony Burgess: “The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world...

For a novelist, the gaps in a story are as intriguing as material that still exists.

Not writing is never an option. This is not words of advice. It’s just literally never an option!

A warm sunny evening, the plash and gurgle of the waves in the rock pools, the rush of the cold gin. I thought for the first time of my novel, abandoned, all these years, and...

Çünkü bana göre siyaset, en sonunda bizim gibi olmayanları kararlılıkla anlamama, romancılık ise anlama işidir.

I guess it’s true: it’s difficult for men to understand women.

The novel should tell the truth, as I see the truth, or as the novelist persuades me to see it. And one more demand: I expect the novelist to aspire to improve the world. …...

Every exceptional writer holds a Master of Arts in Daydreaming.

Edinburgh is a comfortable puddle for a novelist.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

The Adventure called and I followed with my thumb like a character being written by an intractable author. Which, of course, I was.

At the heart of the novelist’s craft lies an optimism which thinks that the knowledge we gather from our everyday experience, if given proper form, can become valuable knowledge about reality.

Freud was just a novelist.

It is not so much as to say that something has occured; but to describe the very essence of the occurance. One must take hold of his readers and pull them into his world…the world...

The pleasures of being a novelist are many. But the greatest by far is the manner in which I live through my characters; experiencing every detail of their story as it unfolds gradually and personally...

I remember calling the council’s cemetery department to ask about body decomposition in different soil types. Once they had verified that I was a novelist and not a sicko, they were extremely helpful.

The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up.

I am, as it were, the created creating—a paradox, for all its rhetorical trappings, at the beating heart of our shared human journey, and one I invite you to struggle with just as I have...