The transgressive nature of biography is rarely acknowledged, but it is the only explanation for biography's status as a popular genre.

My scepticism of biography continues even though I keep doing it.

I don't want to manipulate actuality; I want to record it.

I think of myself as more of a maker than a thinker.

People talk in ungrammatical, unwriterly ways.

As an observer, I'm analysing my reactions, I guess, and my thinking; but about the process of writing... I am not very talented at talking about what I do as a writer.

If I write a page a day, I feel very good about it.

I'm a very laboured writer. I hammer it out sentence by sentence, and it takes a long time. That's what the work is, right? To make the reader think it is not hard to do.

I don't go out of my way to be friendly, because it's completely unnecessary. People tell you what they are going to tell you no matter what.

Journalists who swallow the subject's account whole and publish it are not journalists but publicists.