I've written books that have taken me fifteen years, from first sentence to last, and some that only take three or four months..

You find the book in the process of doing it. That's the adventure of the job..

The biggest book for me, when I was fifteen, was Crime and Punishment, which I read in a kind of fever. When I put it down, I thought, if this is wha….

As long as a man had the courage to reject what society told him to do, he could live life on his own terms. To what end? To be free. But free to wha….

I remember I thought I should become a doctor, even though I had no talent for science whatsoever. Then of course, until I was about sixteen, I thoug….

I still believe we wasted a golden opportunity to make significant changes in our country. I think people in America would have been ready and willin….

As Siri says, who is deeply involved with neuroscience, emotion consolidates memory, and I think that's true..

Most of my friends' fathers had been in the war - either as soldiers or in some other capacity in the military. Whereas my father had not fought. He ….

I think most writers can't really think about their work without a kind of revulsion. And I think that's probably why we keep going back and trying a….

In Invisible there's a lot about childhood, the death of the brother and then the relationship between the brother and sister..

I don't think about the stories so much, as the characters themselves. They live on, and they are almost as real as I am..

I feel now, in my impending old age, very lucky. I just can't tell you how lucky I feel, that I've managed to first of all, stay alive this long, in ….

We hear things, but we can't always see them, or, even if we do see them, we're not sure that we're seeing correctly. Hence: Invisible..

I am very scared at the beginning of each book, because I've never written it before. I feel I have to teach myself how to do it..

I write the paragraph, then I'm crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometime….

History is present in all my novels. And whether I am directly talking about the sociological moment or just immersing my character in the environmen….

I've been trying to fit everything in, trying to get to the end before it's too late, but I see now how badly I've deceived myself. Words do not allo….

You can't put your feet on the ground until you've touched the sky..

I've dealt with numbers all my life, of course, and after a while you begin to feel that each number has a personality of its own. A twelve is very d….

You have to protect it too, you can't let just any stupid person take it and do something demoralizing with it. At the same time, I don't believe in ….

Some people are great, and they approach each work with honesty, and that's wonderful. But when people have built up a sort of resentment or animosit….