What I've always tried to find in my books are points at which the private lives of the characters, and also my own, intersect with the public life of the culture.

Live on, survive, for the earth gives forth wonders. It may swallow your heart, but the wonders keep on coming. You stand before them bareheaded, shriven. What is expected of you is attention.

One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting.

One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare of negative publicity.

‎No people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for 'tomorrow' can be said to have a firm grip on the time.

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

Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak.