To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?

I discovered that if you find the language to talk to younger readers, children can accept anything.

I didn't become a writer to write about me.

As human knowledge has grown, it has also become plain that every religious story ever told about how we got here is quite simply wrong. This, finally, is what all religions have in common. They didn't get it right.

You can't assume if you do something contentious that people will be on your side. The moment violence enters the story, the story changes. Then the question is, "How do you face up to violence?" And then you have to have a no-compromise position. And this is quite simply a lesson we learn in the school playground.

Why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences?

I make no complaint. I am a writer. I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it.