My wife is a scholar; I, a novelist. Sometimes she seems amazed by the wandering indiscipline of my brain, with its tendency to free-associate and invent. I, on the other hand, can only admire the firm, steady discipline of her scholar's mind. But I find that, as always, others have been there, too: William Golding, for example, author of Lord of the Flies (rejected by 21 publishers) and Nobel Laureate in Literature, 1983.

"Scholars are mysterious beings, a breed to whom the shuffles, cobblings-up, adjustments, tricks, and sleights-of-hand of your novelist are quite unknown."