The point is always reached after which the gods no longer share their lives with mortal men and women, they die or wither away or retire... Now that they've gone, the high drama's over. What remains is ordinary human life.

You don't just - you often have to defend the freedoms of people you don't like, you know, whose work you don't like, because freedom of speech is not just for serious people. It's also for trashy people. So, and, unfortunately, this is at the trashy end of the scale.

A figure of speech is a shifty thing; it can be twisted or it can be straight.

Hell is other people's fantasies.

The PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award is a way of spotlighting individual cases. If you look at the history of the award, the freedom rate is very high: a very high percentage of people who receive those awards are freed in the next six months to a year. The only weapon there is attention, but interestingly it works.

I do have a lot of time for people in my life, and friendship is a very important subject for me. I think I'm unusual among the writers I know in that respect.

In general, writers shouldn't be killed for what they write, though I can think of exceptions.