When you go visiting countries, you start reading the history of the place and you start getting into the culture, and then you have to leave. In my experience, all countries have hidden treasures.

Everyone has a need to do penance. It's a basic need, like washing. It's about harmony, an absolutely essential inner balance. It's the balance we call morality.

There’s only one thing worse than not satisfying a desire. And that is not to feel any desire.

I wasn't that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson - I loved all his books.

For me, the best places to write are on planes, trains and at airports. Not hotel rooms but hotel lobbies. I'm really happy when I'm waiting for a plane and the message comes that it's three hours late. Great, I'll get to write!

In most sports, your brain and your body will cooperate... But in rock climbing, it is the other way around. Your brain doesn't see the point in climbing upwards. Your brain will tell you to keep as low as possible, to cling to the wall and not get any higher. You have to have your brain persuading your body to do the right movements.

They say that every writer, they write about himself, and I think that to a certain extent that is true. But also we are creators of fiction.