A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.

No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate, that's the way the world is.

A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.

Each generation thinks it fights new battles. But the battles are the same. Only the people are different.

As you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them --"ordinary things" is a better expression. That is the way the world is.

There is in my work a very strong religious foreground and background. In the later work some of that tends to diminish, but it's certainly present in the early work.

If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the novel? A novel is a kind of exploration and discovery, for me at any rate.