I love developing children as characters. Children rarely have important roles in literary fiction - they are usually defined as cute or precious, or they create a plot by being kidnapped or dying.

If I had to give up my life for anything, it would have to have the resilience of hope, the elation of new literacy, the brilliant life of a field of flowers, the elementary kindness of bread. Nothing short of that. It would have to be something as sure as love.

How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want.

He needs to go rub his soul against life.

I write every moment that is humanly possible. I write every day and every night. The only discipline I lack is the discipline is to quit.

Global commerce is driven by a single conviction: the inalienable right to earn profit, regardless of any human cost.

(on asparagus) Europeans of the Renaissance swore by it as an aphrodisiac, and the church banned it from nunneries.