When I want to read a book, I write one.

Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you to soften, can wake you up.

A new book is very much like a child. Sooner or later it must go out into the world and succeed or fail on its own, usually leaving behind one or two loving people filled with concern and guilt and wondering if they had truly done all they could have to prepare their issue for the cruel marketplace of life.

I began to feel that itch that every writer longs for: the itch to start getting words down, the itch to tell a story.

My greatest wish — other than salvation — was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time.

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.

In the end, you write the book that grabs you by the throat and demands to be written.

When I was young, I knew that, somehow, I would go to Africa and live with animals. And I wanted to write books about them. I don't think I spent too much time wondering exactly how I would do it. I just felt sure that the right opportunity would somehow come. I didn't feel frustrated because I could not go a really long trip while Rusty was still alive. It would have seemed like a betrayal. And while I waited I went on learning.

Stuff that into your womb and give birth to it elsewhere!

My urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller than I am.

I want to do something splendid. Something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead. I think I shall write books.

To lose yourself in a book is the desire of the bookworm. I mean to be taken. That is my desire.

Some people are fond of horses, others of wild animals; in my case, I have been possessed since childhood by a prodigious desire to buy and own books.

I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head.