But love is what we want, not freedom. Who then is the unluckier man? The beloved, who is given his heart's desire and must for ever after fear its loss, or the free man, with his unlooked-for liberty, naked and alone between the captive armies of the earth?

When you have children, your perspective on the parent-child relationship alters.

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

I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.

Cruelty is not a literary value.

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

I needed my stuff around me, and in that little cocoon I felt good, and I could work.