I don't like books that play to the gallery, but I've become more concerned with telling a story as clearly and engagingly as I can.

I didn't want to become some embittered old hack getting his revenge for the rest of my life. And I didn't want to become some scared creature cowering in a corner. I remember telling myself not to carry the hatred around, although I know where it is. I have it in a trunk in storage.

Madame Bovary and a flying carpet, they are both untrue in the same way. Somebody made them up.

Everything has shape, if you look for it. There is no escape from form.

If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he'd be dead by now.

Certainly, the Hollywood cinema, there's almost nothing of interest coming out of there.

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.