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

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

" I suppose I try to look for those things where the world turns on you. It's every automobile accident, every accident at a party, you're having a good time until suddenly you're not. "

Having A Good Time

" I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful. I thought some of the stories were neat; I liked some of the liturgy and some of the songs. "

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

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

" You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. "

" 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. "

" I don't really set out to explore grand themes. I set out to tell a story. And one I have to be able to imagine right through. "

" I get up early. I like to read a little before anyone but the dog is up. I also like to read at night, not in bed but just before I go to bed. "

" If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product. "

" 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 find screenplays easy to write, my novels being very visual. You see what people look like. The physical action is described. "

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

" Half my life is an act of revision. "

" I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story. "

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

" 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. "

" My first attraction to writing novels was the plot, that almost extinct animal. Those novels I read which made me want to be a novelist were long, always plotted, novels - not just Victorian novels, but also those of my New England ancestors: Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. "

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

" I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination. "

" 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. "

" One of the humbling things about having written more than one novel is the sense that every time you begin, that new empty page does not know who you are. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "