A starving child is a frightful sight. A starving vampire, even worse.

I'm definitely more influenced by European writers than I am by American writers, there's no doubt about that.

People write to me all the time to tell me that "homosexuality is an abomination." They base this on a quote in Leviticus. I think the Bible has proved to be a very mysterious and dangerous document.

We all suffer under a curse, the curse that we know more than we can endure, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing we can do about the force and the lure of this knowledge.

I’d thought I knew what beauty was in women; but she’d surpassed all the language I had for it.

I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.

Roman influence seeds itself, sprouting mighty oaks right through the modern forest of computers, digital disks, microviruses and space satellites.