I have likened writing a novel to going on a journey, with some notion of the destination I will arrive at, but not the whole picture - which emerges gradually as a series of revelations, as the journey goes along.

A novel usually takes me two years. A year to research and plan and dream. Then a year to write.

Any setting can potentially acquire this vividness. It slowly arrives during the period of research, until it is as immediate to me as my own real surroundings.

I can inhabit any character in a way that is difficult to do successfully in a contemporary novel.

I think I'm drawn to writing about something which feels intense and important.

The unfolding of a story is both as exciting and as difficult for each and every novel I've written, regardless of time and place.

Life should be embraced like a lover.

I'm not very interested in charting a day-to-day familiar reality. I'm always looking for territory in which to explore the BIG subjects, the life-or-death stories.

When you've finished a piece of work you've had a kind of love affair with it.

I have likened writing a novel to going on a journey, with some notion of the destination I will arrive at, but not the whole picture - which emerges gradually as a series of revelations, as the journey goes along.

The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you're not in that existential panic when you don't have a novel at all.

At the moment, I'm toying with a new idea for a book, but fully engaged with writing screenplays, so the book idea - which needs empty space in my head - is barely formed yet.

So history is fertile territory for me and I think I could feel happy with any period of history, provided I had the right sources and the necessary time for the initial research.

Life is not a dress rehearsal.

Perhaps, all writers walk such a line. In general - as we all do in our dreams - I believe I put something of myself into all the characters in my novels, male as well as female.

Perhaps, more importantly, I think that most human beings realise only a fraction of the true potential of their minds, so the spiritual or mystical, the things which remain mysterious or unexplained have always drawn me to include them in any scheme for a novel.

I'm always amazed by writers who tell me they plan everything at the beginning. I feel their writing days must be very bland.

Never be satisfied with a first draft. In fact, never be satisfied with your own stuff at all, until you're certain it's as good as your finite powers can enable it to be.

I suppose, in a way, this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters, I've done wearing it. When the time comes, it will be in this that I journey forth. What greater honor could come to an American, and a soldier?

The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too.

Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project.

I've been pleased to work with so many wonderful stars through the years. This has been an amazing journey. I hope it continues.

In my subconscious, my books were part of a single emotional journey.

But even if I'm left high and dry at the end of this wild journey, just taking it is a great feeling.

Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it - memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.

These matters having been arranged, I had a temporary awning erected near the river, and was for three or four days busily employed writing an account of our journey for the Governor's information.

My music is about the journey, about love and the human experience.

The only journey is the one within.

People who can pull you in and take you on a journey, as opposed to simply adding flash. Again, that feels very clinical, and I don't respond to that the way I used to.

One approaches the journey's end. But the end is a goal, not a catastrophe.

An illness is like a journey into a far country; it sifts all one's experience and removes it to a point so remote that it appears like a vision.

When I became a director, I wanted to convince a very reluctant Sidney into allowing me to go on the journey of his life. Sidney had gone ahead of every other African American actor.

When life takes me on a new journey, I simply remember the smile my first ballet recital put on my face and I move forward.

All through school, I was losing hundreds of pounds in school, so that's a journey - that's an old journey. I'm tired of that. I know that road.

Science and art, or by the same token, poetry and prose differ from one another like a journey and an excursion. The purpose of the journey is its goal, the purpose of an excursion is the process.

And it was from Boston that one in every six American families began their journey into the land of the free.

I like someone who embraces life; who wants to be on a long journey but has no particular plan or destination in mind. An adventurous man, open to the concept of living life in the moment.

We found on our journey, as well as in the place where we stopped, that they treated us with as much confidence and good-will as if they had known us all their lives.

For so, surely you will cast a light of gladness upon his onward journey, and contribute your part towards the building of that kingdom of love which links our earth to heaven.

As you follow the escapades or the journey of the hero through a story, it evokes some kind of emotion in the viewers. The director's job is to make sure that the audience goes through the journey and has an emotional reaction.

It takes between three and six hours to make each snowball, depending on snow quality. Wet snow is quick to work with but also quick to thaw, which can lead to a tense journey to the cold store.

Success is a journey, not a destination.

We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we've established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile.

Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.

This journey started about 42 years ago in a little town of Brunswick, Georgia.

Philosophy is a kind of journey, ever learning yet never arriving at the ideal perfection of truth.

For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey.

To travel is to take a journey into yourself.

The benefits of the accomplished journey cannot be weighed in terms of perfect moments, but in terms of how this journey affects and changes our character.