I'd rather create a miniature painting than a Taj Mahal of a book.

The notion of love as a potentially destructive and potentially redemptive human force is something that comes across in all my books.

Novels are make-believe and play for adults.

It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book become one of a million different books . . .

What else is belief but direction?

I think massive migration is inevitable. As sea levels rise, as climate change happens, as fertile fields become arid, as wars are fought, people are going to move. They always have.

If we want things to be okay, we will have to make things okay.