O the shame of it, the humiliating shame of being condescended to by dolts

Perhaps because my relationship with my father went through such a long, bumpy time, it's been very important for me to work to try to keep lines of communication open between my sons and myself to try to avoid my father's mistakes. At least if you're making mistakes, make different mistakes.

The accidents of my life have given me the ability to make stories in which different parts of the world are brought together, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes both - usually both. The difficulty in these stories is that if you write about everywhere you can end up writing about nowhere.

I'm no friend of Tony Blair's and I consider the Middle East policies of the United States and the UK fatal.

The history of a culture can be determined by its untranslatable words.

Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.

If you want to be a serious writer, then you have to write what there is to write about. If you're going to pull your punches and second-guess yourself and not do things because you're worried, then don't write. Stay home and do something else.