I think 'Charming Billy' ultimately is a novel about faith and what we believe in and, above all, what we choose to believe in.
Had we settled in Pennsylvania, there's no way I would have written a Confederate novel.
Even in novels where the love relationship isn't the focus, I feel like it's often there, and the background is some barometer of whether this is a happy or sad story or whether this is a successful or unsuccessful life.
With 'Nostromo', Joseph Conrad said that he had wanted to write a novel about the degradation of an idea. That's what we wanted to show in the case of Dustin Hoffman's character, Bernstein.
Consciousness - that, to me, is the theme of the modern novel.
I placed my new novel, 'The Book of Lost Fragrances', in Paris, knowing it would be a challenge. But the book belonged in the city that is one of the greatest perfume capitals of the world and has been since for more than three centuries.
Every novel starts with a theme, and I am constantly looking for big ideas.
It's rather useless to write a gripping narrative with nothing in it but climate change because novels are always about people even if they purport to be about rabbits or robots.
