It’s better to think of my life like that— part miracle, part madness. It’s better if I accept that I can’t control any of the things that matter. My life is a trail of shipwrecks and set-sails. There are no arrivals, no destinations; there are only sandbanks and shipwreck; then another boat, another tide.

You have to engage with people who are different from you and try to work with their thinking and their mind. That's a real challenge.

You cannot disown what is yours. Flung out, there is always the return, the reckoning, the revenge, perhaps the reconciliation. There is always the return.

Unhappiness is selfish, grief is selfish. For whom are the tears?

It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment.

I think writing is a process that starts long before the writers are actually writers and probably goes on long afterward. It's rather like the way the Arabs weave rugs. They don't stop. They just cut them off at a certain spot on the loom. There is no particular beginning or end.

Art is enchantment and artists have the right of spells.