“Every novelist write what he or she needs to write, a subconscious compulsion to express and explain his unique view of reality.”

“A novelist has two lives-- a reading and writing life, and a lived life. he or she cannot be understood at all apart from this.”

“In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.”

“Great novelists are philosopher-novelists who write in images instead of arguments.”

“I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can’t, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.”

“There are many reasons why novelists write but they all have one thing in common a need to create an alternative world.”

“The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.”

“A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.”

“The most original novelist now writing in English.”

“Deliberately or not, every author is of course present in every book he or she writes — even in a scientific text.”