Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.

Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

Before I'd written movies, I never could do big set-piece scenes with a lot of different speakers - when you've got twelve people around a dinner table talking at cross purposes. I had always been impressed by other people's ability to do that.

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.

Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.

Strength is one of those things you're supposed to have. You don't feel that you have it at the time you're going through it.

I'm not sure I have the physical strength to undertake a novel.