I see the carpet reflecting that narratological structure of the storytelling, with Scheherazade as the outside frame story on the outside, with the stories woven on the inside. It's also demonstrative of the infinity of it, with no beginning and no end. The carpet is also a kind of metonym for cinema, this idea that the flat surface carries a terrific depth of imaginative field while remaining totally flat.

If you want a good handbag and glasses, it's hard to get something without the brand name on it because it's so important to have the charmed inscription. The only way you do it... This handbag was the only one in the shop without a charmed inscription. It's just an ordinary bag. I went into the department store in Sloane Square, because I needed a new bag, because my old one lost its handles. Then I found this one, and I said "Why is it so cheap?" and the seller said, "Because it doesn't have a name!"

One of the things I try to do is try to make repetitions, rhymes, and mirrorings across the subject matter of my own books so that the chapter titles and the epigraphs and pictures all kind of form a tapestry. In this book, I retell fifteen of the stories. You have the critical frame, and then you have these rosettes like the motif in a carpet.

The tripartite structure - so you remember the third brother, second brother, first brother, or the first dervish, second dervish, and third dervish. This is very like embroidering a cloth, as you have to know where you are with the knots.

If you want to learn about a culture, you look at what buildings the people lived in but you also want to know about their cosmos.

The female form provides the solution in which the essence itself is held; she is passio, and acted upon, the male is actio, the mover.

A society that doesn't know any longer how to observe every death with proper rituals, that does not know that death is not the end, but only part of the journey, has lost its way, has had the very heart of its humanity torn out.