Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can't. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what's going to happen in each chapter and each scene.

You know the way there are two kinds of actors - the De Niro kind who's always De Niro, and then somebody like Daniel Day-Lewis, who transforms himself eerily? Well, I aim to be the Daniel Day-Lewis kind of writer. I don't have a house style.

I'm not at all snobby about book prizes and how they pollute the world of literature. Just like with the Olympics, a little bit of competition gets people truly engrossed in the business of literature.

I got in the habit of giving away a book as soon as I've finished it because I lived in a housing co-op at Cambridge and had no space to keep books.

A Different World' didn't have the blazing success that 'Cosby' had, but it was on for seven seasons, and we got a lot of awards, and a lot of faces came out of that show and have had great careers.

The quick success was a bit strange to get used to.

And I don't think that success is going to destroy me at this point in my life, like I used to think.

Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.