My approach is not a scientific approach. For that, we have greater minds than mine. My approach is: I am in the possession of a text, it has survived so many centuries, and it is my task, my pleasure, to try to decipher it and find all the things that have been said about these few words by generations and generations of commentators. That is what I'm doing. I don't innovate anything. I'm just repeating.

None of us is in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce it and expose it in all its hideousness. War leaves no victors, only victims.

Today, as yesterday, a nation is judged by its attitude towards refugees.

From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.

Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning. The tragedy of man is that he doesn't know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things at night that should only be said by day.

We are all teachers, or should be. Anyone who relays experience to another person is a teacher. Not to transmit your experience is to betray it.

This is the role of writers: to turn their tears into a story - and perhaps into a prayer.