Once you get older, people stop listening to what you say. It's very agreeable once you get used to it.

I don't like gurus. I don't like people who ask you to follow or believe. I like people who ask you to think independently.

Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends.

Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.

Everything is surprising, rightly seen.

In England, everyone believes if you think, then you don't feel. But all my novels are about joining together thinking and feeling.

A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children.