I've learned not to look at reviews. Early on, I did. I was always curious.

To care about words, to have a stake in what is written, to believe in the power of books - this overwhelms the rest, and beside it one's life becomes very small.

Let me tell you, there's no better medicine than a friendly card game for sloughing off the cares of a workaday world.

I believe that every artist, in one way or another, is a wounded person. It's not natural to make art.

There's hope for everyone. That's what makes the world go round.

I'm not a boy-writer, I've never been. I wanted to be a boy-writer when I was young, and I think that held me back. I wanted to be very clever, and funny, but I'm not very clever and not terribly funny. I've finally accepted my limits, and I do what I can do.

Translators are the shadow heroes of literature, the often forgotten instruments that make it possible for different cultures to talk to one another, who have enabled us to understand that we all, from every part of the world, live in one world.