When I am writing novels I don't read a lot of novels so I try to catch up in-between.

Too many people spouting too many words, and in the end those words will turn to bullets and stones.

Even when things are at their worst, there's a little voice in your head saying, 'Good story!'

You can adhere to your faith, but that faith needs to march in line with the rest of the world and needs to find a way of expressing itself in the modern world.

There's no point going to a country which is torturing people to ask them to stop if they can point out that the United States is doing it too. It enormously weakens the argument. Back in the early days of the Bush administration, PEN made a decision that we would try and make human rights issues and civil rights issues in this country part of the priority, and not just international issues, which had more or less been the priority up until then.

Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.

As I look back, I feel a touch of pride at my younger self's dedication to literature, which gave him the strength of mind to resist the blandishments of the enemies of promise. The sirens of ad-land sang sweetly and seductively, but I thought of Odysseus lashing himself to the mast of his ship, and somehow stayed on course.