A happy man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else.

What reality was ever made by realists?

I had some bad jobs when I was young. Writing is not one of them. If you're fortunate enough to reach my age, to still be writing, you have to be grateful, and I am. I've been lucky. For many years, all I've done is writing, and it's all I've ever wanted to do.

We have a very foolish notion in Western countries that progress delivers freedom. But progress doesn't necessarily bring moral virtue.

Writing is not lying, nor is it theft. It is a journey and search for transparency between one’s words and one’s soul.

The enslavement, humiliation, torture, and ultimate destruction of thousands upon thousands of human beings for a project for which there was ultimately no purpose is a horror that's very hard to imagine, far less understand.

It's a sin for a writer to go looking for camels to put into his or her pages. I only want details that are the story.