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" I believe that, in any novel of mine, the principal objective is the construction of the whole. "

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" When I feel like being a director, I write a novel. "

" I have a very poor record at multiple choice questions. "

" Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either. "

" I believe in plot, in development of character, in the effect of the passage of time, in a good story - better than something you might find in the newspaper. And I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it. "

" I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station. "

" I sometimes think that what I do as a writer is make a kind of colouring book, where all the lines are there, and then you put in the colour. "

" Of all the things you choose in life, you don't get to choose what your nightmares are. You don't pick them; they pick you. "

" I wasn't afraid of anything until I had a kid. Then I was terrified because immediately I could imagine a hundred ways in which I could not protect him. "

" There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep. "

" There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long a novel is in your head before you start to write it. "

" The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of. "

" And I find - I'm 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any. That's the necessary part of being a writer, you better like being alone. "

" There's no reason you should write any novel quickly. "

" Titles are important; I have them before I have books that belong to them. I have last chapters in my mind before I see first chapters, too. I usually begin with endings, with a sense of aftermath, of dust settling, of epilogue. "

" The principal event of my childhood was that no adult in my family would tell me who my father was. "

" I grew up around books - my grandmother's house, where I lived as a small child, was full of books. My father was a history teacher, and he loved the Russian novels. There were always books around. "

" If I have any advantage, maybe, as a writer, it is that I don't think I'm very interesting. I mean, beginning a novel with the last sentence is a pretty plodding way to spend your life. "

" And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you. "

" I do know where I'm going and it's just a matter of finding the language to get there. "

" You don't want to dwell on your enemies, you know. I basically feel so superior to my critics for the simple reason that they haven't done what I do. Most book reviewers haven't written 11 novels. Many of them haven't written one. "

" Half my life is an act of revision. "

" I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft. I can write more quickly than I can read. "

" I believe you have constructive accidents en route through a novel only because you have mapped a clear way. If you have confidence that you have a clear direction to take, you always have confidence to explore other ways; if they prove to be mere digressions, you'll recognize that and make the necessary revisions. "

" I don't read anything electronically. I don't write electronically, either - except e-mails to my family and friends. I write in longhand. I have always written first drafts by hand, but I used to write subsequent drafts and insert pages on a typewriter. "

" My old coach used to say that if you were in it for the match, if you were in it for the trophies, you were in it for the wrong reasons. "

" When I love a novel I've read, I want to reread it - in part, to see how it was constructed. "

" More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have a talent that's special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina. "

" No adult in my family would ever tell me anything about who my father was. I knew from an older cousin - only four years older than I am - everything, or what little I could discover about him. "

" I never wanted my kids to feel I was more interested in anything I was doing than I was in them. "

" You can't learn everything you need to know legally. "