One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare of negative publicity. If you can make them sufficiently uncomfortable, they frequently respond by doing what you need them to do in the spirit of setting people free or ceasing arrests, which has worked time and time again with PEN.

Reading is a very different thing than performing. In fact, one of the things I think that doesn't work in books on tape is if the person doing the reading "acts" too much; it becomes irritating to you listening to it.

Hell is other people's fantasies.

Writers have an opinion about the world and offer arguments about the world. They should offer contemplation.

I want to write novels. I want to write stories. I want to do the stuff that I became a writer to do.

English, no longer an English language, now grows from many roots.

The fact of being alive compensated for what life did to one.