I think people direct good films when they feel personal to them, not because it's a famous book or something. It has to something move over that and somehow become personal to the director.

I have always thought, the secret purpose of the book tour is to make the writer hate the book he's written. And, as a result, drive him to write another book.

One of the problems of truth being censored for a really long time is that people lose the ability to intuit what truth might be, and therefore begin to swallow whatever they're fed. I think that's something that the Chinese have learned very well. They've even managed to persuade quite large segments of the population that the martyrs of Tiananmen were actually an anti-national element. People don't view them as heroes, they see them as troublemakers. There you have a combination of censorship of truth creating a new truth, which is the lie, but it's not seen as such.

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

Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet...Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.

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

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