“Writing a novel is agony.”

“Writing is a delicious agony.”

“Plenty of people were writing novels; in fact, if one did a survey in the street, half of Edinburgh was writing a novel, and this meant that there really weren't enough characters to go round. Unless, of course, one wrote about people who were themselves writing novels. And what would the novels that these fictional characters were writing be about? Well, they would be novels about people writing novels.”

“You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing.”

“I find writing novels a challenge, writing stories a joy. If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.”

“The writer's job is not to write a novel, hold it up and say, “Here I am,” but to write a novel, hold it up and say, “Here YOU are.”