[Some people think] that storytelling is telling jokes. So they have to be discouraged! Then others think that storytelling-is like an encounter group . . .

What matters most is that we learn from living.

Little Tamar, forget the long ago. We are here and we are now, and that is all. We are making a new start.

Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty - and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.

In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.

I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot.

Coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous.