'My hands do the thinking'

‘When you write something down you pretty well kill it. Leave it loose and knocking around up there and you never know - it might turn into something...

My hands do the thinking. It is not a conscious process...

I can't explain how one creates a novel. It's like jazz. They create as they play, and maybe only those who can do it can understand it.'

Cormac McCarthy, author of The Passenger, The Road, No Country for Old Men, The Border Trilogy and five other novels, in interviews with local papers early in his career, reprinted in the New York Times