From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.

A man is sane only to the extent that he subscribes to a previously-agreed construction of reality.

I think that a lot of us, whether we are religious or not - there are no words to express some things except religious words. For instance, 'soul.'

As though she had entered a fable, as though she were no more than words crawling along a dry page, or as though she were becoming that page itself, that surface on which her story would be written and across which there blew a hot and merciless wind, turning her body to papyrus, her skin to parchment, her soul to paper.

The gamble of literature is that I make the best work I can; the most truthful, the most representative of how I see things. I try and do that and then I put it out there and say to you, "What do you think?" I hope that you think well of it, obviously.

If Turkey wants to join Europe, it will have to become a European country, and that might take a long time.

I don't think I've ever quite grown out of it, actually. There was a point where I could recite some of those Elvish verses - which I've mercifully forgotten. But I can still, if really pushed, recite the text of the inside of the ruling ring in the language of Mordor.