I don't know who said that novelists read the novels of others only to figure out how they are written. I believe it's true. We aren't satisfied with the secrets exposed on the surface of the page: we turn the book around to find the seams. ↗
I always read all these books about the slaves. My mother is very educated. My father would talk to us like we were grown men. We never knew what he was talking about half the time. ↗
When you do interviews, you have to talk about yourself - and I like to find out about other people. I am so familiar with everything that I do. I've said it over and over again. I think it is boring. ↗
What is hard to remember when you're in the middle of it is that when you get through to the other side, you always walk away with a gift. If you can stand in there and not walk away from it, you get transformed by it. ↗
What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature. ↗