I have never written a novel, but I can testify that the arduous process of writing my way from the beginning of a sequence of ideas or events to the end, trying to keep the thread in mind at all times, indulging in digressions but striving to control them, achieving new insights or interpretations that require backtracking and rewriting, thinking all the time about how to make this path of thought attractive and meaningful to a reader, finally coming to the best arrangement and presentation of such a path as one can manage, and only then making the work public—this arduous process, I say, is immensely and wonderfully challenging.

In his review, “The Idea of the Book” in Books & Culture.