It is impossible to fuse totally with a culture for which you feel a measure of antagonism.

A word is worth one coin, silence is worth two

…everything has a past. Everything – a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present and plan properly for the future.

It's always easier to learn something than to use what you've learned. . . . You're alone when you're learning. But you always use it on other people. It's different when there are other people involved.

Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.

A writer is a strange instrument of our species, a harp of sorts, fine-tuned to the dark contradictions of life.

A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel.