Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

I believe in a funny way the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

Novelists have always had complete freedom to pretty much tell their story any way they saw fit. And that's what I'm trying to do.

A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.

As a novelist I tell stories and people give me money. Then financial planners tell me stories and I give them money.

My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters who sits down and has pieces of paper taped to the wall - what's going to happen in this scene or this act. What I like is for it to be a much more scary sloppy reflection of who I am.

As a novelist I mined my history my family and my memory but in a very specific way. Writing fiction I never made use of experiences immediately as they happened. I needed to let things fester in my memory mature and transmogrify into something meaningful.

The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.

I know that books I have written will still resonate in 50 years - particularly 'My Sister's Keeper.' It has sold three million copies in the States alone. I strongly feel that as a novelist you have a platform and the ability to change people's minds.