America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to the select few.

When I walk up on that shore in Florida I want millions of those AARP sisters and brothers to look at me and say 'I'm going to go write that novel I thought it was too late to do. I'm going to go work in Africa on that farm that those people need help at. I'm going to adopt a child. It's not too late I can still live my dreams.'

Perhaps all writers walk such a line. In general - as we all do in our dreams - I believe I put something of myself into all the characters in my novels male as well as female.

We have no general conceptual thrust for the band other than trying to make music that keeps our interest. When things are novel they are probably things we have discovered by accident or investigation rather than by design.

The first novel I wrote was a monster - clocking in at 180 000 words - but it died a death a death it deserved. It was called 'The Gods First Make Mad.' It was a good title but it was the only good thing about the book. I didn't let that put me off.

Somehow knowing that Alzheimer's is coming mocks all one's aspirations - to tell stories to think through certain issues as only a novel can do to be recognised for one's accomplishments and hard work - in a way that old familiar death does not.

I've got an idea for a modern day faerie tale that I think would made a great short novel. But I just don't have the time to work on it right now. I'm way too busy with the 'Kingkiller Chronicles' and being a new dad.

I had bohemian parents in Seattle in the last '60s living in a houseboat. My dad wrote science fiction novels and painted big murals and oil paintings.

My dad was always such a frustrated artist. He always worked very hard to support his family doing a bunch of ridiculous jobs. He wanted to be a painter but then he also wrote science-fiction novels in his spare time.

When you're 14 anything with a sword and a dragon is pretty cool. But when you're 21 and you've read 2 000 fantasy novels you start to realize that some of those books well they weren't really good. OK let's be honest. A lot of them were crap.

I wrote seven Myron Bolitar novels in a row and I never want to write a Myron book where he just solves a crime. Every one of them I want to be personal and I want him to grow and change. The problem with that is it makes the series limited you can't write a series where a guy is always going through some kind of crisis.

The earth was made so various that the mind Of desultory man studious of change And pleased with novelty might be indulged.

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.

For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class the novel is serious the novel is work the novel is conscientious application why the novel is practically the retail business all over again.

The turning point was when I hit my 30th birthday. I thought if really want to write it's time to start. I picked up the book How to Write a Novel in 90 Days. The author said to just write three pages a day and I figured I can do this. I never got past Page 3 of that book.

You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel.

When I first thought of the idea for 'Sweet Valley High ' I loved the idea of high school as microcosm of the real world. And what I really liked was how it moved things on from 'Sleeping Beauty'-esque romance novels where the girl had to wait for the hero. This would be girl-driven very different I decided - and indeed it is.

Because if one is writing novels today concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons for wasted effort.

Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature and describe a happiness that humans never taste. How deceptive and destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss!

The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.

All humanity is passion without passion religion history novels art would be ineffectual.

The very essence of the creative is its novelty and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.

I take a lot from everywhere. I take from music architecture novels and plays. Anywhere that hits you.

The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.