Mordecai Richler

If you're writing a novel, you're in a room for three or four years. There's not much coming in from the outside.

Coming from Canada, being a writer and Jewish as well, I have impeccable paranoia credentials.

I'm criticized by the feminists, by the Jewish establishment, by Canadian nationalists. And why not? I've had my pot shots at them. I'm fair game.

Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates.

The process hasn't changed, but the writer has developed. I still get up every morning and go to work.