What I am trying to achieve is a voice sitting by a fireplace telling you a story on a winter’s evening.

I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch.

There is really no practical help that one can offer; it is a matter of self-discovery, of one's own convictions, or working with one's own work; your style is what seems natural to you. It is a long process of discovery, one that never ends. I am working at it, and will be as long as I live.

I don't use a typewriter, I write longhand, with a pencil. Essentially I'm a horizontal writer. I think better when I'm lying down.

If Francoise Sagan hadn't written a book called A Chateau in Sweden, I would certainly write a short story called A Chateau in Puerto Rico. And I may yet.

Talent, and genius as well, is like a grain of pearl sand shifting about in the creative mind. A valued tormentor.

I also write the last paragraph or page of a story first. That way I always know what I'm working towards.

I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon.

I think the only person a writer has an obligation to is himself. If what I write doesn't fulfill something in me, if I don't honestly feel it's the best I can do, then I'm miserable.