People would come and threaten them. And they would respond by putting the book in the window. Behind that, the publishers, many of whom were menaced and receiving anonymous phone calls of the very menacing kind and so, almost everybody - not everybody, but almost everybody held the line.

Sometimes I think that when people become famous, there's a public perception that they are not human beings any more. They don't have feelings; they don't get hurt; you can act and say as you like about them.

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

I think anyone who knows me at all knows that I have been a movie addict all my life. I grew up in a city obsessed by cinema and where there are cinemas on every street corner.

An iceberg is water striving to be land; a mountain, especially a Himalaya, especially Everest, is land's attempt to metamorphose into sky; it is grounded in flight, the earth mutated--nearly--into air, and become, in the true sense, exalted. Long before she ever encountered the mountain, Allie was aware of its brooding presence in her soul.

Even when things are at their worst, there's a little voice in your head saying, 'Good story!'

You want all your books to stick around after you've gone.