By and large the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is after all a form of communication.

I'm talking to you and it's basically a direct communication whereas if I'm writing a letter to you and you read the letter there are like 12 extra deconstruction and reconstruction steps in the communication.

I thought my life was mapped out. Research living in the forest teaching and writing. But in '86 I went to a conference and realised the chimpanzees were disappearing. I had worldwide recognition and a gift of communication. I had to use them.

In a way song writing can almost be detrimental because suddenly you find an outlet that is a kind of cheating. You don't need to have direct communication. You can say 'I can't describe it to you but I will record it and send it to you.'

Writing is a communication.

Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.

The desire to write grows with writing.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

I'd say that after my father passed my writing changed it went deeper. Most would say 'matured' but I don't think I'd use that word in relation to my progress. I think 'change' is a little more accurate.

I was born left-handed but I was made to use my other hand. When I was writing 'Famished Road ' which was very long I got repetitive stress syndrome. My right wrist collapsed so I started using my left hand. The prose I wrote with my left hand came out denser so later on I had to change it.

Becoming a mother cannot help but change things. An author's life is reflected in their writing whether they want it to be or not and parenthood is one of the biggest life changes there is.

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.

If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing because you have that space.

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.

In recent years I've been writing because I'm fortunate enough to work in the world of food television to travel and taste and learn about cooking from the best chefs in the business.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out where in my writing I might go next.

There is a growing literature about the multitude of journalism's problems but most of it is concerned with the editorial side of the business possibly because most people competent to write about journalism are not comfortable writing about finance.

I gave up lots of things I love doing: writing and business and playing the piano and so on.

No there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn't sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours' writing. Nothing.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid stable business.

Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

I wasn't very good about juggling family and my career. I was interested in who was coming to the children's birthday party what my son was writing. I was thinking about Legos.

The best writing is not about the writer the best writing is absolutely not about the writer it's about us it's about the reader.

Like anything else that happens on its own the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have but when it comes to the act of creation the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.