'The great thing about fiction-writing is that you are licensed to lie'

'Writing fiction, you can lose your way, go down a wrong path, come up against a dead end. You may know where you want to get to, but it's like the joke about asking for directions in Ireland: "I wouldn't start from here if I were you." Then you have to tear up your map, throw everything in the wastepaper basket, and start again from somewhere else. The great thing about fiction-writing is that you are licensed to lie. There is no pleasure like it. It's a great relief after biography, where everything you say has to be documented, or else acknowledged as intuition of creative fantasy.'

Victoria Glendinning in the Guardian