A Novel Should Be A Book Of

I'm A Very Organised And Rational And Linear Thinker And You Have To Stop All That To Write A Novel.

I Am Not A Historian. I Don't See What I Do As Being A Rival To Biography.

So Many Years Of Preparation, For What Was Called Adult Life: Was It For This?

Fiction Isn't Made By Scraping The Bones Of Topicality For The Last Shreds And Sinews, To Be Processed Into Mechanically Recovered Prose. Like Journalism, It Deals In Ideas As Well As Facts, But Also In Metaphors, Symbols And Myths.

If I Am Feeling Broken, I Can Pick Up One Of [ivy Compton-burnett] Books And The Next Morning I Can Write Again. It Puts My Mechanism Back.