People respect nonfiction but they read novels.

I'm not embarrassed about the novels I wrote when I was younger but I couldn't write them today because of my religion.

It's a luxury to be able to tell a long form story. I love novels and I love to have a long relationship with characters.

I don't think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It's essentially just a long narrative form. What you use that long narrative form for can be very different.

We don't tend to write about disease in fiction - not just teen novels but all American novels - because it doesn't fit in with our idea of the heroic romantic epic. There is room only for sacrifice heroism war politics and family struggle.

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.

And I know I'm supposed to feel guilty for wanting people to buy my books... and books in general? Novels and poetry they belong to the realm of art. How dirty of us to try to hawk art! But after a decade of hand-wringing and apologies I can't quite muster the guilt anymore.

I know I'm not a wordsmith. And I don't write poetry. Sometimes I think I should because it's really helpful. But I always wanted to write novels.

I've never written a movie I'm not in the movie business. I go out to L.A. and I'm like everyone else wandering around in a daze hoping I see movie stars. I write the novels that the movies are based on and that feels like enough of a job for me.

Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that.