If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.

People aren't quite sure what it means when a book is a Booker Prize winner. They're not quite sure what is being recommended, what literary values it stands for, because every year it stands for something different.

Every country should have a strong literary tradition of its own at the center, but it should also have an interest in other countries.

Love isn't about when you first meet. It's about the many, many years you spend together, when you're trying to keep that flame burning.

As I say, I have never in all these years thought of the matter in quite this way; but then it is perhaps in the nature of coming away on a trip such as this that one is prompted towards such surprising new perspectives on topics one imagined one had long ago thought throughly.

We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.

For a great many people, the evening is the most enjoyable part of the day. Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day. After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?