You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.

There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.

Those whose kernels were cracked by benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.

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.

Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.

We don't want to be simply wandering about without some kind of reason, we want our presence here to have a purpose, and that we are not going to end here, we are going to proceed somewhere else, and also that we didn't begin here, that we began somewhere else and all that living, all that elaborate account of our presence seems to be quite basic to our nature and so this is what literacy taps into.

What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.