I'm a big-city boy. What I like is big cities. It's not just what I like. It's what I write about.

I have no problem with people's religious beliefs. I just don't happen to have any.

I had a very difficult relationship with my father, which ended up okay, but there were many difficult years.

I fell victim to the temptation of every autobiographer, to the illusion that since the past exists only in one's memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.

Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.

One of the things I've learnt is not to depend on there being a woman in your life to make it work. I love my work, I love my children, I've got wonderful friends, you know, I have a nice life.

Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms.