A novel, at least for me, cannot be visualized at one time.

If you try to write a novel in L.A., you're a chump; everyone is speeding by, and you're driving a rickshaw.

When the narrator says, 'This is a story without surprises,' most of the time, this is not what happens.

I'm becoming more of a novelist as I get older. The novel just seems the truer form. There's less artifice involved.

The short story can't really hold an interesting event. It can't hold a death or a war or a loss of great magnitude the way either a long story or a novel can.

The historical background is one of the easier aspects of writing a novel. Far more difficult is dreaming up the smaller, character-based scenes, scenes that rise entirely from one's own imagination.