I think it is immensely difficult to get the U.S. interested in non-U.S. topics. I dont think this is because the average American reader is disinterested, but more because of publishers playing it safe: if a thriller based in L.A. is a sure winner, why spend money plugging one based in Paris - or Bangkok?

Shun security, I advise aspiring novelists when they complain to me that they are stuck. Get disoriented. Maybe your agonizing writing block isnt agonizing enough. Your enemy is comfort.

When you notice light seeping into your coffin, it's hard to go on pretending that you're still dead.

You don't understand. I only prostitute the part of the body that isn't important, and nobody suffers except my karma a little bit. I don't do big harm. You prostitute your mind. Mind is seat of Buddha. What you do is very very bad. You should not use your mind in that way

The great weakness of the West is that it has nothing with which to inspire loyalty except wealth. But what is wealth? Another washing machine, a bigger car, a nicer house to live in? Not much to feed the spirit in all that.

There are plenty of brilliant people who are too stressed out to read challenging literary novels.

Just studying Buddhism, then meditating and going to Buddhist monasteries, talking to Buddhist monks, combined with the Thai people themselves, changed the way I look at the world.