Well, the problem with architecture is that it’s a long process. Many of the bigger projects that we have — and even the smaller ones — tend to take three years minimum but they can also go on for five or 10 years. So there is no real single defining moment in the way that there sometimes is with other creative processes. It’s not like in theater, where you think, “Okay, tonight’s the opening night,” and then you all go out for a drink afterwards. A building is progressively being completed, even on the day of the opening! I think the point when you can really stand back is a little bit later, maybe one year later.

I know when it’s completed but I don’t have a formula for this.

I think that’s an instinct.

At a basic level, I think something is successful if I think I got myself anywhere new at all.

Anyhow, I think when you have a novel to write again, it will begin visiting you, whispering, “Write me.” Till then, no jumper cable, not even a lightning bolt, can bring it into being.

Charles Dickens. Jane Austen. And then, when I finally learned to read her, Virginia Woolf. Shoot for the top, always. You know you’ll never make it, but what’s the fun if you don’t shoot for the top?

I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.

As I got up in my 70s, stories began coming to me more and more rarely. I finished the novel Lavinia at 78. I no longer have the stamina to undertake a new novel, even if I wanted to. So, here I am, an old writer who loves writing – what have I got left to do?

Taoism gave me a handle on how to look at life and how to lead it when I was an adolescent hunting for ways to make sense of the world without going off into the God business. Returning to Lao-tzu throughout the years, I’ve always found—and find—him offering what I want or need to learn.

Either you’re listening out for the kids or you’re writing. So I wrote when the kids went to bed. I wrote between nine and midnight those years. And my husband would listen out if the little guy was sick or something. It worked out.