Beyoncé and pathos are strangers. Amy Winehouse and pathos are flatmates, and you should see the kitchen.

If we want a book to do more than what it does, that's a condemnation. If we want it to do more of what it does, that's an endorsement.

Writing is a performance art for me. They're very closely aligned, writing and performing. But I'm a writer, not a performer.

Even in moments of tranquility, Murray Walker sounds like a man whose trousers are on fire.

The Language Laboratory at Cambridge is a very good way of finding out about grammar and the vocabulary and that's why I learned to read German and later on I added Spanish, the standard European languages.

Freedom and diversity guard each other, and if a country could form the whole of one's character, Napoleon III and Victor Hugo would have been the same person... if national identity means anything, it means something that comes with you wherever you go, and stays with you no matter how long you stay away.

Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology.