When I am emperor, I will abolish private education. Private schools, private college. All of these parents with money and energy and the drive for bake sales and a desire to leave their vast fortunes to education - everybody would have to be eating out of the same educational pot.

Everybody believes in chance.

I believe, in my better moments, that there is a plan and things go not the way we want them to but the way they should.

When I am emperor, I will abolish private education. Private schools, private college. All of these parents with money and energy and the drive for bake sales and a desire to leave their vast fortunes to education - everybody would have to be eating out of the same educational pot.

Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings.

I don't write for an audience, I don't think whether my book will sell, I don't sell it before I finish writing it.

I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing.