And theories are no more than fictions which help us to make sense of experience and which are subject to disconfirmation when their explanations are no longer adequate.

My son even if you want to fall, at least fall where your bones can be gathered

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands. In one of my essays, I remember the kind of things that fascinated me. Weird things, even, about a wizard who lived in Africa and went to China to find a lamp... Fascinating to me because they were about things remote, and almost ethereal.

We live in a sea of general ideas, so that's not a novel, since there are so many general ideas. But the moment a particular idea is linked to a character, it's like an engine moves it. Then you have a novel underway.

As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.

There must be areas in which a particular character does not represent you.

People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.