I start early in the morning. I'm usually out in the woods with the dog as soon as it gets light; then I drink a whole lot of tea and start as early as I can, and I go as long as I can."

"I am trying - in a good cause - to crowd people out of their own minds and occupy their space. I want them to stop being themselves for the moment, I want them to stop thinking, and I want to occupy their heads."

"One is improvising when one writes, and you pick up in the same way a musician starts to improvise and detect the inner structure of what he's playing - that's the way it works in the writing of a novel. You pick up the beat."

"I write a very rough first draft of every chapter, then I rewrite every chapter. I try to get it down in the first rewrite, but some chapters I can't get quite right the third time. There are some I go over and over and over again."

"One doesn't consider style, because style is."