There is no comparison. The American landscape is so much more dangerous. They have real snakes, mountain lions, bears; we only have adders, and they're more frightened of us than we are of them.

I felt that, in some ways, my novels lacked heart because of the distance between me and the subject matter. But no one wants to read a book based on good health, a happy upbringing, a long marriage.

Narrative is so rich; it's given up so much.

You can't sing baritone when you're a soprano.

Everyone says I should write a natural history or landscape book because if I have an area of amateur expertise, it is in those things.

The western view of Christ is usually of a stainless being with fair hair who appears to have come from Oslo.

When people asked me what I did, I'd say, 'I work in publishing', and when they then say, 'What side of it?', I say, 'Supply' - no doubt leaving them to think I drive the books around in a van and deliver them.

I'm not that well-versed in literary theory - I don't know what it is.

I come from a working-class background where I was much more likely to read socialist books and leaflets than Bronte or Dickens - neither of whom I've yet read.

I'm a matter-of-fact, office-hours writer.

All the uncontrollable and unpredictable parts of my life - from the actual creation to my emotional responses to the finished book - I've succeeded in banishing to the office. And I think I'm happier for it.

Part of me feels that I'm letting people down by not being as interesting as my books.

I'm a very secretive person.

There's a convention that books are mirrors of the real world, but our fact-obsessed age also wants fiction to be factually based and trustworthy.

Lots of people hate my stuff.

While we're having all these debates about how the book is being destroyed by the Kindle, we have to remember that narrative will not be affected at all because it's part of our makeup as a creature on this planet.

I'm not a new-agey person, but narrative is ancient and wise and generous.

The Commonwealth Prize is about celebrating the Commonwealth and the special relationship we have with the ex-colonies - which is part guilt and part warmth - and the Booker Prize isn't an essential part of that, but it is part of that.

I like shaped things. I like shape in things, and I do overshape things, it's true.

Inside, Penlee House is without pretension. It is a space that knows its limitations and its strengths - and makes the most of them.

I feel the political failings of the U.S.A. are presidential in length, but the aspirant narrative of the States is millennial in length.

I've been very lucky with prizes. But the thing about prizes is that, when you talk about a prize-winning author, you can be talking about one that is well-regarded but doesn't sell any books.

You can't be unhappy in the middle of a big, beautiful river.

Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness. And they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy... or they become legend.

I don't see gender as the most significant fact of human existence.

We pretend that the brain is binary, like a computer. But it's not. It's completely holographic.

Naturally we would prefer seven epiphanies a day and an earth not so apparently devoid of angels.

The big curse of America, to me, is skinless, boneless chicken breasts. They're banal and relatively flavorless. The rest of the world's trying to get some fat to eat, and we're trying to ban it from our diet.

Either you can do what others want, or you can do what you want to do. That's an easy call.

We are delightfully trapped by our memories. I can't drink a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape Vieux Telegraphe without revisiting a hotel bistro in Luzerne, Switzerland, where I ate a large bowl of a peppery Basque baby goat stew. A sip and a bite. A bite and sip. Goose bumps come with the divine conjunction of food and wine.

There's something frightening about finding a woman who would take your heart.

After a lifetime of world travel I've been fascinated that those in the third world don't have the same perception of reality that we do.

My biggest pet peeve is when you go to a fine restaurant, and it's like a mausoleum inside. Good food should be joyful. There should be laughter and chatter, not people sitting there like they're in a funeral-parlor waiting room.

I do mourn my characters. I wrote an essay once where I was sure that far back in a marsh there was a hummock - a little hill of hardwoods - and an old farm house, where all the heroines in my novels lived together with all my beloved dead dogs. I've discussed this with my therapist, naturally. He says it's okay in fair amounts.

As a child, I was an obsessive reader, as was everybody in my family all winter long with my father. I think I was only 8 when I read Edward Gibbon's 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'

I've got a poem that's in a lot of international anthologies called 'After the Anonymous Swedish' and I thought, 'Well, I'm a Swede. I can make up a Swedish poem.' It turned out pretty good.

You can be in terrible shape, and if you take a three-hour walk through the forest and along the river, you're simply not the same as when you started out.

Sometimes, I tell my wife I have to take a car trip and collect new memories - I like to drive around at absolute random for weeks on end through the United States and parts of Canada. Or else I feel trapped, like you feel when your life is completely planned for months in advance, and you think you're not getting enough oxygen.

I like grit. I like love and death. I'm tired of irony.

I wrote 'Legends of the Fall' in nine days, but I had been thinking about it for a few years.

You do manage a somewhat religious attitude toward your art. It is a calling rather than a job.

I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.

I work every morning, all morning, sometimes in the afternoons. Then sometimes I hunt in the afternoons - quail, doves, grouse up north - but just to stay alive, because writers die from their lifestyle but also from their lack of movement.

I'm actually forced to write about Michigan because as a native of that state it's the place I know best.

Marriage is survived just on the basis of ordinary etiquette, day in and day out. Also cooking together helps a lot... I've seen all these marriages that failed. Those people are always hollering at each other. That doesn't work.

Success and money can really be quite blinding.

I became aesthetically obsessed with language. And 'literary artist' - poet and novelist - is a calling. You are called to it the way preachers are called to preaching the gospel.

I do have trouble with titles.

Michigan is two radically different places - the North and the South which makes for good drama and contrast.

So when I made some money, I didn't have any idea how one handled such a situation because no one in our family ever had any money.