‎Not having time for a person, not being able to sit in silence together with somebody, that's the same as rejecting them, as being scornful about them.

Justice doesn't only mean that the people who commit crime are punished. It also means that we can never give up seeking the truth.

For me Oliver Twist is a political novel. It is a furious critique of the treatment of orphans and poor children who were forced to spend their early lives in ghastly institutions.

You can have more than one home. You can carry your roots with you, and decide where they grow.

Have I ever written anything that has really changed something? What I believe is that you can't change anything without using art. I believe that the drops wear away the stone. I try to be part of that army.

I know paradise has many gates, just as hell does. One has to learn to distinguish between them, or one is lost.

Although I never marched through the streets shouting for Mao, I do believe that the liberation of China at the end of the 1940s was a wonderful thing and to provide its people with a billion pairs of shoes and trousers was a fantastic achievement.