The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. That's why so many bad novels can become good movies like 'Jaws' or 'The Godfather.'

I love the movies and when I go to see a movie that's been made from one of my books I know that it isn't going to be exactly like my novel because a lot of other people have interpreted it. But I also know it has an idea that I'll like because that idea occurred to me and I spent a year or a year and a half of my life working on it.

For the first-time novelist you've got to get up at 5:30 in the morning and write until 7 make breakfast and go to work. Or come home and work for an hour. Everybody has an hour in their day somewhere.

I'm a morning person because I learned to write my novels while still practicing law. I would get to the office at 6:30 a.m. and write until other people arrived around 9. Now I still do that. I start at 6:30 or 7 and I'll write until 11 then take an hour off then work until about 2 p.m. By then my brain has had enough.

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in you know just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing a character came sort of strolling in and I realized Oh my God I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

I've found myself at one in the morning just sitting at my desk spending an hour returning emails from the day until like two in the morning. It's ridiculous I should be sleeping or dreaming or reading a novel.

What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism.

I think the worst and most insidious procrastination for me is research. I will be looking for some bit of fact or figure to include in the novel and before I know I've wasted an entire morning delving into that subject matter without a word written.

Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.

Women thrive on novelty and are easy meat for the commerce of fashion. Men prefer old pipes and torn jackets.