the first task for the aspiring novelist is to read tons of novels. Sorry to start with such a commonplace observation, but no training is more crucial.

It’s a very rough estimate, but my guess is that about five percent of all people are active readers of literature. This narrow slice of the population forms the core of the total reading public.

Once the habit of reading has taken hold—usually when we are very young—it cannot be easily dislodged.

It is my belief that a rich, spontaneous joy lies at the root of all creative expression. What is originality, after all, but the shape that results from the natural impulse to communicate to others that feeling of freedom, that unconstrained joy?

A writer’s greatest responsibility is to his readers, to keep providing them with the best work that he is capable of turning out.

good luck is, so to speak, simply an admission ticket.

Before we can say much about an artist’s style, we need to see an accumulated body of work. Otherwise there just isn’t enough to go on. We can’t really assess someone’s originality until we can line up a number of their works and examine them from a variety of angles.

I might, at one time, become a twenty-year-old lesbian. Another time I’ll be a thirty-year-old unemployed househusband. I put my feet into the shoes I’m given then, make my foot size fit those shoes, and then start to act. That’s all it is. I don’t make the shoes fit my foot size but, rather, make my feet fit the shoes.

Nevertheless, based on my own experience, I have found that the occasions when conclusions must be drawn are far less numerous than we tend to assume.