You can't assume if you do something contentious that people will be on your side. The moment violence enters the story, the story changes. Then the question is, "How do you face up to violence?" And then you have to have a no-compromise position. And this is quite simply a lesson we learn in the school playground.

I think the book is less emotional than the film. With the film, the emotions are much more raw and in front. In the book, they are kind of ironized and seen through comedy.

I have to say that after some initial resistance, I'm now a complete 'Game of Thrones' addict.

Airport security exists to guard us against terrorist attacks.

Unfortunately, the problem of the free speech argument is that you have to defend people you can't stand.

The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it -when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.

To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?