I think if you maintain a force in the world that comes into people's sleep, you are exercising a meaningful power.

It's true that some of us become better writers by living long enough. But this is also how we become worse writers. The trick is to die in between.

Longing on a large scale makes history.

There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists...Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.

I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them.

He said, "The word for moonlight is moonlight.

Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That's why so many of them are in jail.